How do you control or modify hand shock in an otherwise efficient bow

[Woodbear]

Thanks for giving some of your experience with DF97. Good to hear that it has been successfully used on wood bows without special tip overlays.
I may have to pretend DF97 is primitive, and fork over and buy a roll of the stuff.

Do you follow the recommended number of strands for a string that fits a 3mm (0.118") throat nock? Endless loop string or Flemish twist? Do you add extra serving at the loops?

Dave

[Selfbowman]

I use D97 . Ten strands is plenty for 55# bow. .030 serving.

[superdav95]

On self bows without overlays I do pad my loops with extra short strands of lay in pieces that are staggered in length.  On a 8-10 strand d97 string I’ll add in 4-6 loop strands for padding.  It works fine for me and doesn’t affect the bow back or the performance. 

I know it goes without saying but there is just something special about a really well tuned self bow.  Even with a really good modern string.  I was doing some shooting sessions yesterday and was reminded how good a self bow can feel in the hand and how accurate they can be.  Super quiet and sufficient performance with consistency is hard to beat.  Yes my modern fg laminate bows are slightly faster but only slightly and not enough to be a deal breaker for sure.  Not knocking fg laminated bows at all and they can be very good shooting bows.  I’ve shot several of them over the years.  Shooting the fg laminated bow yesterday followed by two of my favourite self bows reminded me how much of a difference the feel is and how dead in the hands quiet my self bows were compared to the fg laminate bow.  I realize that there is a much bigger conversation on this then I’m going to get into now but getting this fg laminate bow shooting as good as it can with proper weighted and spined arrows still didn’t come close to how pleasant the shooting experience of the self bows were.  Just trying to say that I live self bows and advanced primitive bows!  I guess that’s why we are all here right!   Anyways I rambled a bit here.   Cheers.