Next step

[DC]

This is fun stuff. Just wish I had a place to shoot distance. Dam trees

[bownarra]

Keeping the angle of recurve for the leverage but reducing the length. This will save you tip weight whilst keeping the energy storage. Also giving you slightly more working limb. Short and very sharp recurves are the next logical step. Cut kerfs and use boiling if necessary.

[PatM]

I think his tips are as short and sharp as he can get them.

[Badger]

      I have been saying for over a decade that when Mark St Louis style bows start showing up at the flight shoots we will all have to up our game. The time has come it looks like. One advantage your longer bow has is that it has excellent energy storage and is also very efficient. I believe your efficiency is coming from two places primarily. One is that you limited your working limb area, too much working limb kills efficiency as it gives the limb too much opportunity to distort or vibrate at the end of the power stroke. Another successful feature on your bow is that you successfully kept set to a minimum which is what causes hysteresis in wooden bow. The longer bow will allow you to shoot heavier flight arrows than a lesser bow could get away with. With a legal 2" overdraw you might try building the same bow you have now maybe 62" long and going for 50# at 26". This would allow you to shoot a 24" arrow. I believe with very well made arrow you could approach 500 yards if everything came together.

[DC]

Keeping the angle of recurve for the leverage but reducing the length. This will save you tip weight whilst keeping the energy storage. Also giving you slightly more working limb. Short and very sharp recurves are the next logical step. Cut kerfs and use boiling if necessary.

Doesn't reducing the length reduce the leverage? Recurves are confusing me. I may think about it a bit and maybe start a different thread.

I think his tips are as short and sharp as he can get them.

I am pretty confident about the way I do them so it seems that they could be a little tighter. But then I'd be risking them breaking and I'm too cheap to waste the yew. Kerfing would work.

      I have been saying for over a decade that when Mark St Louis style bows start showing up at the flight shoots we will all have to up our game. The time has come it looks like. One advantage your longer bow has is that it has excellent energy storage and is also very efficient. I believe your efficiency is coming from two places primarily. One is that you limited your working limb area, too much working limb kills efficiency as it gives the limb too much opportunity to distort or vibrate at the end of the power stroke. Another successful feature on your bow is that you successfully kept set to a minimum which is what causes hysteresis in wooden bow. The longer bow will allow you to shoot heavier flight arrows than a lesser bow could get away with. With a legal 2" overdraw you might try building the same bow you have now maybe 62" long and going for 50# at 26". This would allow you to shoot a 24" arrow. I believe with very well made arrow you could approach 500 yards if everything came together.

Why did it take so long for Marc's style to show up? Any time he posted a bow people said how fast it looked. The next step seems obvious.

All these things you mention are the stuff that I lucked into. There was no planning involved so I'm not sure what to change and what to leave alone. It's fun trying though.

If I added an overdraw that would bump me up to complex composite wouldn't it? I'm still puzzling out the rules. If that was the case then I should also be taking advantage of the multi lam option, if it is an advantage.

[bradsmith2010]

I thought the point of shooting a shorter bows was to shoot lighter arrow,, so why would a heavier flight arrow be better,, just asking,,

[bradsmith2010]

ok DC,, the way you are lucking into things is a process you are great at,, so just continure as you always do,, like I said,, when you make the next one, it will help you luck into the new design you are developing,,the chronograph, eliminates the ideas that are not working ,,,,

[willie]

Recurves are confusing me.

Same here. I think there are two different advantages at work at the same time.
1. the string angle allows for a higher early draw weight
2. higher stresses allow limbs to be lighter.

the first is about stored energy, while the second is about efficiency after release.

[DC]

Recurves are confusing me.

Same here. I think there are two different advantages at work at the same time.
1. the string angle allows for a higher early draw weight
2. higher stresses allow limbs to be lighter.

the first is about stored energy, while the second is about efficiency after release.

Well, let's do it here. To start, what difference does the radius make? I guess assuming the same total reflex.

[bradsmith2010]

string angle?

[Badger]

Keeping the angle of recurve for the leverage but reducing the length. This will save you tip weight whilst keeping the energy storage. Also giving you slightly more working limb. Short and very sharp recurves are the next logical step. Cut kerfs and use boiling if necessary.

Doesn't reducing the length reduce the leverage? Recurves are confusing me. I may think about it a bit and maybe start a different thread.

I think his tips are as short and sharp as he can get them.

I am pretty confident about the way I do them so it seems that they could be a little tighter. But then I'd be risking them breaking and I'm too cheap to waste the yew. Kerfing would work.

      I have been saying for over a decade that when Mark St Louis style bows start showing up at the flight shoots we will all have to up our game. The time has come it looks like. One advantage your longer bow has is that it has excellent energy storage and is also very efficient. I believe your efficiency is coming from two places primarily. One is that you limited your working limb area, too much working limb kills efficiency as it gives the limb too much opportunity to distort or vibrate at the end of the power stroke. Another successful feature on your bow is that you successfully kept set to a minimum which is what causes hysteresis in wooden bow. The longer bow will allow you to shoot heavier flight arrows than a lesser bow could get away with. With a legal 2" overdraw you might try building the same bow you have now maybe 62" long and going for 50# at 26". This would allow you to shoot a 24" arrow. I believe with very well made arrow you could approach 500 yards if everything came together.

Why did it take so long for Marc's style to show up? Any time he posted a bow people said how fast it looked. The next step seems obvious.

All these things you mention are the stuff that I lucked into. There was no planning involved so I'm not sure what to change and what to leave alone. It's fun trying though.

If I added an overdraw that would bump me up to complex composite wouldn't it? I'm still puzzling out the rules. If that was the case then I should also be taking advantage of the multi lam option, if it is an advantage.

   I think Marks bows were not showing up because they are not easy to make. They do require skill and careful tillering. A good reflexed longbow or recurve can come pretty close to them so competition hasn't forced any of us to really put everything into a bow. With Arvin showing up and his team competition has now gotten pretty tough. The next few years are going to be interesting. Chuck Loffler is also building competitive bows. I wish I was younger and not getting out instead of in.

[Badger]

I thought the point of shooting a shorter bows was to shoot lighter arrow,, so why would a heavier flight arrow be better,, just asking,,

  Brad light arrows fly much faster but are also much harder to tune and don't carry near as well through the air. A heavier arrow might just be denser material with the same draw co-effecient as a much lighter arrow so will carry further and be slightly less finicky coming out of the bow. I think above 400 yards will require the lighter arrows but I also believe a fast 50# bow can hit 400 yards with maybe a 250 or 260 grain arrow. I hit 386 while practicing using a 260 grain purple heart arrow. The bow I used was not exceptional in anyway but it was fresh which gives a bow a big advantage.

[PatM]

Recurves were also killed off by borderline dogma in TTBB.

  The old statics of the past were generally not TOO short in length of lever.   
 
 It's the  deflex in the handle that's a bit of a change but fwiw I think a non deflexed has the potential to shoot faster, even if it's only for a few shots.   That's all that matters in flight though.

[DC]

I think that the deflex just allows you to use a bit of the brace height to actually send the arrow. The brace height of a deflexed bow is only about 2-3" if you get my drift. That means you get about 3-4" of draw length without straining the bow any/much more. But then you stress it more by putting in a bunch of reflex. I dunno but there seems to be a net gain in there somewhere. It's hard to think about because everything depends on everything else.

[Badger]

  Another factor is how close to the handle that the limbs are working, Lots of extra draw length in those 2" closer to the handle that most of us are not bending. That does a lot to keep the set down as it is equivalent to drawing a much shorter draw length bow as far as stress goes.