old tech versus new

[BowEd]

Yes Steve....Gary has really liked the carbon fiber component in his FG bows the last few years.The designs he did were recurves.
bushboy....Loads of variables is right.I'm not on as hard a mission of this as Marc and Steve and some others are but do like a flat shooting bow 20 yards or under with a heavy arrow.
The thing Gary likes a lot is the higher margin of repair that can be made to natural materials than FG.So do I.Our bow making ancestors did it with trial and error just like nowadays.The one thing though too making a good FG bow does not take as long as a natural materials bow.

[Lukasz Nawalny]

Modern materials do not make yourself good bows, good bowyers make good bows . I have used modern and traditional materials on theseme d/r longbow ipe/ash/hickory and fg/carbon/maple , differend in speed was about 5 fps for modern materials, but shooting comfort much better in natural bow, without vibrations after shoot.

[loon]

this armchar bowyer's opinion:

I don't really understand the big risers on western recurves... well, guess they give more efficiency for lighter arrows at the cost of less energy storage? Like whip ended tillering or I guess a setback handle. The limbs are still often too wide. And very little reflex, if any. Korean synthetic bows take a lot more stress than most western recurves. They bend more and have way narrower limbs, and are reflexed. A bow with a big stiff handle section but more reflexed and narrow limbs would be faster. guess most western recurves are all about stability or something.

With heavier arrows, bow speed/efficiency with lighter arrows matters less and energy storage matters more, so I guess whatever material can bend the most without breaking would do best?

I have to try compression pine and cordage backings. I would probably try nylon, I can't be arsed to make a ton of sinew cord and nylon seems like it does a little better. Heard some really good things about reaction softwood, but not from many sources. With enough energy storage, could make a great bow for heavy arrows

this was interesting, only the better korean synthetics did better than selfbows

[Lukasz Nawalny]

That was realy great pyramid selfbow made of black locust. Bowyer is high class engineer and all dimension was put to extreme. He focus on bow but arrows had very bad. We chrono this bow and shoot about 230 fps 5GPP arrows im sure he can shoot well over 300 metres
Im sure that traditional material bows can beat on flight tournament modern material bows. 2 years ago my wife shoot on flight tournament 239 metres on only 30 lb turkish hornbow .When turkish hornbow shoot on ff string speed are similar or even better to modern bows, more important is arrow.Selfbows can be ultra fast  becouse of low limbs mass. For this reason we do not have  multi class system. We shoot all together - I think it is very attractive for competitors - all natural bows archers have something to prove .

[TimPotter]

Check out the stats in Redhawks tests here.

https://redhawk55.wordpress.com/

Plus I've got to personally hang out with badger for a few days and he has more bows sitting inside 55 gallon drums and all of them would more than likely wipe the smirk off a Fiberglass archer's face.