Author Topic: deflex and reflex theory  (Read 42947 times)

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Offline DC

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Re: deflex and reflex theory
« Reply #45 on: October 22, 2019, 12:04:11 pm »
And also I think that a design is a design and will work no matter what the material is. It's just how extreme you can go depends on the material. Twisting and set become the limiting factors.

Offline Selfbowman

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Re: deflex and reflex theory
« Reply #46 on: October 22, 2019, 03:00:54 pm »
Ok Arvin has thought common sense here. Since I don’t get the math. I think I agree with DC . String angle is nothing more than string angle. Bow design and length of draw is the important factors to put the energy into the arrow to create cast. As far as width and thickness the Bowyers Bible has gotten pretty close on dimensions to straight stave bows.the rest is keep building till you get it right. That’s what I do.  Arvin     
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Offline Stick Bender

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Re: deflex and reflex theory
« Reply #47 on: October 22, 2019, 03:11:43 pm »
And also I think that a design is a design and will work no matter what the material is. It's just how extreme you can go depends on the material. Twisting and set become the limiting factors.

I totally agree with that Don & Arvin I have 2 bows to finished up but want to make a less aggressive design using maple osage & sinew as lams using the same idea !  But every bow is a test in length , tapper & amount of D/R especially with natural material ! I suspect in will take more then 1 !
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Offline Halfbow

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Re: deflex and reflex theory
« Reply #48 on: October 23, 2019, 01:49:54 am »
DC, the bows you make with that design are great, and are a strong testament to how good the design can be. I think you're spot on, straight limbs at full draw is ideal. If your gut says string angle is just a symptom, I'm curious, does it have any feelings about what's the cause?
Not really but possibly the actual lever length of the limb. A "lever" is the direct measurement from the fulcrum(grip) to the point of effort(where the string hits the bow) ignoring any bends. With a straight bow the lever gets shorter as the limb bends. Bad. With a reflexed bow the lever gets longer as the bow bends. Better but can be unstable and by the time you get the bow braced you've used up most of the bend. With an RD the deflex gives you your brace height without using up much bend and by moving the tips back it also stabilises the bow some so you can use more reflex. If you can arrange things so that the limb is straightest at FD then I think you would have maximised the lever length.
Also if you can move the the bend toward the grip you can shorten the actual string length. By that I mean the part of the string that isn't touching the bow. Then your braced lever length is short because the lever is measured to where the string hits the bow. This gives you a short lever when the bow is easy to pull and the lever lengthens as you draw it when it gets harder.
That was a lot of typing for a "not really" but those are my thoughts. I get the impression that some others here are swishing roughly the same thoughts around in their heads.
All that said if I understood the physics of bending a beam with a string maybe string angle would mean something ;D

I agree with most of that, and some of it is what I was trying to say earlier. You say that a reflexed bow's lever length gets longer as the bow bends, which seems quite at odds with me saying that reflexed bows usually get extra short as they bend. But I suspect if we further clarify what we mean, we actually agree about most of the underlying principles here. I'm realizing the explanation of my drawing a couple pages back leaves a lot to be desired.

There are two different ways to use the word reflex that I think make the conversation muddled. Reflex can refer to where the limb curves away from the string. But when I talk about "overall" reflex, I'm talking about how far the tips are in front of the handle when unbraced. I'm using it in the sense people use it when they say like, "This bow kept 2 inches of reflex after tillering". They're just measuring how far the tips are beyond the handle, irrespective of the curves the limbs may have taken to get there. I think that difference in language is important to pin down. As D/R bows show us, a bow's limbs can be reflexed along their entire length without the bow having any overall reflex (if the handle is deflexed enough). Similarly, a bow's limbs can be entirely deflexed along their length, like they took set, but the bow could still end up with overall reflex if the handle is reflexed. So these are quite distinct concepts.

In the explanation of my drawing, I should've been more clear, but I was meaning that the farther limbs bend past straight, the shorter their lever length gets. As my drawing shows, increased overall reflex does mean the bow has to bend farther to get to full draw. For most common primitive-type bows, this increased bend means shorter lever length. This is because the main working area is usually pretty close to straight when unbraced, and it starts bending past straight as soon or nearly soon as you start to brace it. Heck most bow's working areas have some string follow, and are bent a little past straight before you even touch it to brace it. This means that the more overall reflex they start with, the farther past straight they will bend, and the shorter lever length they will have. A bow that has overall reflex due to recurves is better off than a bow with reflex with straight limbs, as recurves can counteract some of the loss, but it would always be even better if the main working areas weren't bending so far past straight. Hence some of the benefits of a deflexed handle. I think we agree on all that, right?

But the bow design we've been talking about, the one Stick Bender posted pictures of, doesn't fit in to this usual category. When unbraced, the working area isn't straight or near it, it's significantly curved away from the string. Essentially the whole limb is a working recurve. If we think of the movement of a limb in 3 stages: Pre-straight, straight, past straight, these bow limbs start pre-straight. Their lever length gets longer as they bend toward straight. Then if they go past straight, it starts getting shorter again. The more deflex in the handle, the later this turning point happens.

I agree with all that you said about string contact and the lever length elongating as you draw. That's a recipe for a fat f/d curve. Though I suspect if you take that concept too far and tried to have the string contacting a large proportion of the limb at brace, some other inefficiencies would rear their head. But I won't get in to that now.

Moving on to lever length and string angle, they're closely connected. You'd have to really work to design a bow with a long lever length and bad string angles, so they're mostly two sides of the same coin. So you could look at lever length as the one that matters, and string angle just as a easy quick glance diagnostic. But I'm reluctant to think of string angles as merely a symptom. The direction the string is pulling on the limb pretty directly matters, and the angle that the string makes at your fingers matters too. As the angle at the fingers gets sharper, you put significantly less force on the tips. I don't want to get to math-y, but the pictures here do a good job of explaining. https://roperescuetraining.com/physics_angles.php And you can see in my drawing how much better the angle at the fingers is for the deflex handled bow, even with the same limb length.

Also important to keep in mind is something that stuckinthemud was saying in his original post. Looking at a bow braced and at full draw, you can't easily tell how much overall reflex it has when it's unbraced. Overall reflex/deflex doesn't necessarily matter to the shape of the bow at any point during its use. But I will have to get in to my thoughts on that and why it's interesting at some other time, if anyone is interested.

Offline Badger

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Re: deflex and reflex theory
« Reply #49 on: October 23, 2019, 07:44:38 am »
      First we figure all the ways for a bow to store more energy ignoring stability and stress factors.
      Then we post all the tings in a bow that will cause it too loose energy.
       And then find ways to compromise and mitigate the losses.

      The biggest enemy of efficiency is working limb area because our biggest losses are in limb distortion and vibration, the shorter the working limb area the less opportunity for the limbs to distort on the power stroke. The next biggest source of losses are due to hysteresis which is in direct relation to the amount of set a bow has taken. Reducing set usually means more working limb and adding width and mass to limbs reducing thickness. I haven't found mass to have much negative effects when used in the inner limbs.

      As for string angle we use that a couple of ways. A very low string angle at brace gives the accelerating arrow a lot more control over the limbs allowing it to suck more energy out. Maintaining that low string angle for as long as possible makes for a flatter FDC with high starting weight and slow build . It simply stores a lot more energy. The unbraced shape doesn't tell us much about string angles or how much energy a bow might be storing.

     As far as priorities in design go I like to give avoiding set the top priority, avoiding vibration second priority( shorter working limb area) and energy storage 3rd priority. If it wasn't for set or the fact that bows break when you bend them too far you could make the perfect bow with about 3" of bending limb. I built a super recurve several years back with maybe a 6 or 8" working limb area. It had about 12" behind the tips and maybe 8 or 10" of string contact with the limbs at brace. The bow was very stable with no twist or torsion issues, it stored about 125% of peak draw force energy and the first few shots were well over 200 fps at 10 grains per pound but it broke down very quickly with each shot.

     Usually when we are estimating speed on a bow we are about to build we figure a laminated bow will usually outshoot a self bow with the same profile by about 8 fps. I have found if the self bow doesn't take any set which is very rare the difference is much smaller like maybe 3 fps.

   These are some numbers for self bows that I think are pretty typical, I seldom use a reflex deflex in a self bow and usually opt for straight reflex even though I find the r/d to be a tad faster. These are for bows that have taken 1" set between about 64" to 68" long.

      Straight self bow about 172 fps, 1" reflex ( tips behind handle) about 175 fps,  2" reflex about 179, 3" reflex up about 184 fps. With less set the numbers will go up a bit and with more set they will go down a bit regardless of having same finished profile. I think the deflex can add about 2 fps to those numbers. I also find the best place to reduce working limb areas is in the outer limbs because they don't add as much to your draw length anyway and keeping outer limbs stiff maintains better string angles. A bow taking set and gaining hysteresis close to the handle will kill a bows performance. 

   

Offline Selfbowman

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Re: deflex and reflex theory
« Reply #50 on: October 23, 2019, 08:08:14 am »
Good proven info Steve. So are you saying string angle could tell us if our bow design is a good one?
Arvin
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Offline Badger

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Re: deflex and reflex theory
« Reply #51 on: October 23, 2019, 08:14:21 am »
  Arvin, I think in most cases controlling set forces us to keep our designs pretty basic. Any bow with stiff outer limbs and some reflex will have decent string angles.

Offline DC

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Re: deflex and reflex theory
« Reply #52 on: October 23, 2019, 09:47:39 am »
I think we're pretty much on the same page, probably on the same paragraph. I haven't thought much about working limb length. When I do the material limitations leads me to Turkish hornbows and with my build I'm finding that may not be the way I want to go. Does anyone know if the "Bow Simulator" program will give info like lever length? I can't get it to work on my computer but  new computer may not be far down the road.

Offline DC

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Re: deflex and reflex theory
« Reply #53 on: October 23, 2019, 10:43:17 am »
      I built a super recurve several years back with maybe a 6 or 8" working limb area. It had about 12" behind the tips and maybe 8 or 10" of string contact with the limbs at brace. The bow was very stable with no twist or torsion issues, it stored about 125% of peak draw force energy and the first few shots were well over 200 fps at 10 grains per pound but it broke down very quickly with each shot.

   

Badger, you've mentioned this bow before. Did you ever try this design again with just a little more working limb?

Offline Deerhunter21

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Re: deflex and reflex theory
« Reply #54 on: October 23, 2019, 11:46:28 am »
      I built a super recurve several years back with maybe a 6 or 8" working limb area. It had about 12" behind the tips and maybe 8 or 10" of string contact with the limbs at brace. The bow was very stable with no twist or torsion issues, it stored about 125% of peak draw force energy and the first few shots were well over 200 fps at 10 grains per pound but it broke down very quickly with each shot.

   

how'd it break?
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Offline Badger

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Re: deflex and reflex theory
« Reply #55 on: October 23, 2019, 12:11:54 pm »
      I built a super recurve several years back with maybe a 6 or 8" working limb area. It had about 12" behind the tips and maybe 8 or 10" of string contact with the limbs at brace. The bow was very stable with no twist or torsion issues, it stored about 125% of peak draw force energy and the first few shots were well over 200 fps at 10 grains per pound but it broke down very quickly with each shot.

   

how'd it break?
   It didn't break, it broke down from stress, it lost about 15# inside of a dozen shots. I was fortunate to get a couple quick shots out of it. It los about 5 fps with each shot until it went all the way down to 157 from I think about 214.

Offline avcase

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Re: deflex and reflex theory
« Reply #56 on: October 23, 2019, 04:16:28 pm »
The reasons a reflex-deflex design outperforms a straight bow design is more about dynamic efficiency, and to a lesser extent energy storage.

The curvature of the end of the limb effectively stiffens the end of the limb.

If you were able to monitor the kinetic energy in the limb from the moment of release, you would notice that the tip of a straight bow design slows down significantly in the last few inches before the arrow leaves the string. But the mid-limb just keeps carrying forward and doesn’t slow significantly until the arrow is gone. This is wasted kinetic energy that never makes it to the arrow.

In contrast, the deflex-reflex limb end forms an arch that curves away from the direction of travel as it approaches its brace height. This helps resist the mid-limb from carrying forward in the last several inches before the arrow leaves the string. The dynamic stiffening of the end of the limb more effectively forces the conversion of the kinetic energy of the entire limb to the arrow.

Another way to look at it is to think of the end of the limb as a bridge. The most effective bridge forms an arch against the weight it must support.  In this case, the “weight” is the decelerating limb mass. A straight bow limb is arching the wrong way, like a saggy beam, and is structurally less effective.

The effect of the curvature of the end of a reflex-deflex bow is similar to the effect of using stiff levers on a straight on a straight bow design bow, except the entire length of the reflex-deflex bow limb is also available for energy storage.   So there you have it.

Pictures would probably help.

Alan

Offline Halfbow

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Re: deflex and reflex theory
« Reply #57 on: October 23, 2019, 04:52:28 pm »
Avcase, that's an interesting concept I haven't thought of before. Do you literally mean the tip slows down while the mid-limb carries forward? That sounds like the limb is becoming more bent as it travels toward brace... Sounds weird. Are you aware of any slow motion videos where the effect is visible?

Edit: After thinking about it a bit more, I have a better visual in my head. I can see something like what you're saying showing up as a sort of wave that starts as the handle and travels toward the tips. The tips don't literally slow down, but rather just go a bit slower than you'd hope. It's easy to imagine how such a thing would lose a lot of energy. But, this seems to speak more to the benefits of recurve than about the benefits of deflex. Wouldn't these advantages be just as present on a recurved bow with a reflexed handle? (Though we would be getting in to horn bow territory there)
« Last Edit: October 23, 2019, 05:41:56 pm by Halfbow »

Offline sleek

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Re: deflex and reflex theory
« Reply #58 on: October 23, 2019, 06:30:03 pm »
Avcase, that's an interesting concept I haven't thought of before. Do you literally mean the tip slows down while the mid-limb carries forward? That sounds like the limb is becoming more bent as it travels toward brace... Sounds weird. Are you aware of any slow motion videos where the effect is visible?

Edit: After thinking about it a bit more, I have a better visual in my head. I can see something like what you're saying showing up as a sort of wave that starts as the handle and travels toward the tips. The tips don't literally slow down, but rather just go a bit slower than you'd hope. It's easy to imagine how such a thing would lose a lot of energy. But, this seems to speak more to the benefits of recurve than about the benefits of deflex. Wouldn't these advantages be just as present on a recurved bow with a reflexed handle? (Though we would be getting in to horn bow territory there)

Here is a comment I made on a thread a while back that took a similar direction.

Thought experiment: Applying arrow paradox to bow limbs on release. The most motivated part of a bows limb will move first and may move faster than the limbs tips. This loads the other parts of the limbs with energy until all energy is spread equally across the limb. Under slow motion, it probably looks like a wave. If the timing of this wave could be done correctly, the tips would be be at tje crest right when brace heightis hit, snapping the last of the energy into the arrow.


It's in this thread here....

http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php/topic,65348.0.html
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Offline Badger

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Re: deflex and reflex theory
« Reply #59 on: October 23, 2019, 09:01:49 pm »
  Allen, they do store more energy. And they tend to be more efficient as long as they remain stiff in the outer limb. If someone tillers amn r/d bow to look like a d bow when braced they loose all the benefits.