Flight arrows

[adb]

Could some of you top flight shooters post some pics of your flight arrows? Steve? With brief explanations of what you're doing and why?

[Badger]

  As for flight arrows I would have to say the Allan case would be a good example to follow. Arrows have been my weakest link. It is so important to have them come out of the bow straight that if they don't everything else is meaningless. You are dealing with three seperate aspects. The weight of the arrow affects how fast it leaves the bow, the lighter the arrow the faster it leaves. The spine of the arrow and how it is shot affect how well it comes out of the bow and how fast it straightens out, I didn't even mention the fletching here because if the fletching played much a part in straitening out the arrow it had allready robbed a lot of speed. Now you have the actual flight of the arrow, too much drag in relation to mass will kill the arrow also.

     Small diameters, slight tapers from point to rear knock or slight barrel tapering with a bullet nose tip seem to fly the best. The smaller diameter and thinnest fletching material you can find. The stiffness depends a lot on the bow, center shot stiffer arrows I have had better luck with most of the time. My experience sugests that at least a slight amount of weight in front of center is best but there are exceptions to this also.

[Del the cat]

From my very limited experience I've found it's very hard to tell whats going on and whats best.
Shooting from heavyish ELBs I found spine could be a LOT lower than you'd expect (else it needed bigger fletchings to straighten it out which then gave drag).
Fletchings as small as you could get way with. I think a nice slim faired in nock is easily overlooked. Last time I shot for distance (70# self Yew elb, the lightest and weakest spine didn't go furthest bad flight/loose but the best was about 40# spine 5/16 shaft tapered front and rear with a tiny nock cut into a horn insert.
It was good fun, I'd love to do more flight shooting, but I can only really test arrows at 10 yards, which can show how quick they straighten up.
Del

[adb]

What is the "Allan Case?"

I've always been interested in flight shooting, but so far only with warbows, where the arrows are all standardised. The various types of arrows all have to meet strict guidelines, and it's the bow that makes the difference, with no upper limits on draw weight. Generally, to set records with warbows, it's a case of more horsepower wins. Not always, but certainly in the upper elite levels, with guys like Joe Gibbs shooting 180# setting the records.

In traditional flight shooting, where the bow is classed and the arrows are not (I'm just guessing here), there seems to be limited info on making flight arrows. Is this a closely guarded secret? Are flight arrows always wood, or do modern materials like CF play a role? Again, do you guys have pics, or can you direct me somewhere that does? Thanks!

[Badger]

 adam, primitive flight arrows are all wood and natural materials. The weight of the arrow will depend somewhat on the weight of the bow. Heavier bows have a slight advantage in that they can get away with heavier arrows which are far easier to design properly. Bows around 50# are usually shooting arrows around 200 grains plus or minus. There is no secret formula because it needs to be matched to the bow but generally speaking the nock end should be narrower than the point end, points are best rounded than long skinny points. Selecting the proper spine for a bow and getting good at doing this requires more practice shooting than I have been able to dedicate. You really need almost perfect flight right out of the bow. I find I get better distances from very average speed bows simply because I find them easier to tune. I plan to spend more time this year experimenting with arrows and will report whatever finding I feel are meaningful. A lot of my testing has left me more puzzled than I was when I started because sometimes I see no rime or reason to the results. I have been working on refining my testing parameters and hopefully it will yield something of usefulness in the future. I had pretty good flight from my arrows this year but had poor takeoffs. I feel like I am narrowing it down.

[Marc St Louis]

Allan Case is well know in flight shooting for his laminated Bamboo arrows which so far are superior to anything else out there.  I have to admit though that I am a bit puzzled why they would allow laminated Bamboo arrows and not forgewood shafts in the primitive class.  Light arrows will come out faster but their lower mass means they will slow down faster, given a specific drag.  Heavier arrows of the same diameter will carry their velocity better.

I did a bit of experimenting many years ago with different weight arrows and arrows of different materials.  My best results were with HHB arrows around 275 grains with a diameter of about 1/4"

Here are some of the arrows I experimented with.  The arrow at the bottom is one you sent me Steve after you set the record with my sinew backed recurve.



This other picture shows some HHB arrows and a couple Meadowsweet arrows

[adb]

Thanks, Marc. Duh... I never thought Allan Case was the name of a person. I'll do a google search for him.

Thanks for the pics of the arrows.

[PatM]

http://paleoplanet69529.yuku.com/topic/29783/Split-Cane-Bamboo-Flight-Arrows

[son of massey]

Marc, I don't know that I have ever seen HHB arrows before. Are those split out? If so, what diameter log did you start with and how did you find a clean enough section? Most of the HHB I have run across has enough character that I would think getting arrows out of it would be a real investment of effort.

SOM

[Badger]

  I have pretty good luck with the purple heart and the ipe arrows as well. I think the denser woods fight drag a lot better than the lighter woods. My purple heart and larch arrows were doing a pretyy good job of keeping up with Allens Laminated arrows this year but none of them were comming out as clean as they should be comming out. 270 grains is a lot more forgiving than 200 grains but if you can get the 200 grain arrow to come out straight it will have a lot more speed.

[PatM]

Clean HHB is not THAT rare. At least up here. You just have to put in some walking to select the best trees.
 I never use it for arrows but the trees I select as bow quality are also mostly arrow quality.

[son of massey]

Pat,

I can't see much of the grain in the pictures, but what I can see it looks really clean. I have lots of 'pretty decent' straight HHB, just not much that is that good and not for any appreciable length. I was also curious to how it was prepared because I have not had much luck splitting out small bits of it-the tree in general splits fine but smaller pieces tend to run out on me a lot-partly due to even somewhat wonky grain. So if they were sawed the minor twists and dips will not be followed real closely-which leads to the follow up question I was going to drive at. For these thinner lighter arrow shafts I would assume (and maybe incorrectly) that clean grain is more important than with our "lumbering" large hunting arrows because each run off makes up a larger percentage weak spot at that shaft. Combine that with what I also assume to be more violent forces being applied to these smaller shafts and it seems like one would have to be very particular about grain. Ultimately I guess that is what I was going to get to wondering-are flight arrows something one needs to far more picky with?. Also it was just cool to see shafts made from that tree-like I said I don't think I have ever seen that and I doubt I would have thought of it any time soon.

SOM

[PatM]

HHB is so dense and tight grained that minor wiggles can be straight-lined. I would be pickier about flight arrows in general though

[Marc St Louis]

You're welcome Adam.  Glad to see you have an interest in flight, it's an interesting sport

HHB does not need to be straight grain to make arrows and flight arrows are relatively short.  It's such a tough wood that the arrows can be made out wood that has spiral growth.  Most of the HHB I would cut back then would be at least 6" in diameter and occasionally some trees of 10" ~ 12".  I know where there are some trees right now that are at least 12" in diameter but they have considerable spiral growth.

How much more speed would you get from an arrow 75 grains lighter Steve?

[Badger]

  Mark, that is a good question, in the next week or so I will test that out. I took a bow to the flights that was my fastest ever that didn't fallapart on me. I was getting 260 with 200 grains, I am going to take a guess I loose about 30 to 40 feet per second at 270 grains but really don't know for sure. I plan to retest the bow anyway to see how much it lost now that it is shot in pretty well. I just now weighed the arrow the bow did the best with at 340 yards and it weighed 245 grains. The lighter arrows were about 40 yards behind it.