Red Oak Board Bow Cook Off Results

[blackhawk]

First of all I wood like to thank everyone who participated,whether it be a bow was made and sent, or attempted to make.  Hopefully some young folks will reap the fruits of your labors. 

Jon(straightarrow),Bill(hickorybill) and I met up at a local sportsman club yesterday(sept 24) in the morning to do the testing. This ensures a neutral grounds testing site.

First photo here is a blank scorecard to show you how each bow was tested.



So let me explain the process as to how each bow was tested and scored. First thing we looked for was for any splinters,chrysals and frets,damages,and a general lookover of the bow to make sure it was a safe bow to string up and if there was any problems to make sight of it to see if those problems got any worse later after shooting.

Second was to measure all the bows dimensions first before bracing the bow.  And after bracing the brace height and the bows braced blue print(positive,0,or negative tiller) was measured.

Next up was the extractor of truth(chronograph test)  3 shots were taken from each bow from the same arrow. Here is the arrow on a scale,and it weighed 454 grains.



The 3 shots were then added up and divided by three to give a average speed number for each bow.

Fourth step was the actually shooting of each bow. We all brought a slew of arrows with varying spines and lengths to make sure we properly found a batch of arrows to each bow. All of the bows were properly matched and we didn't have any mismatches.  This ensured that each bow was given its proper due. We all shot each bow as many times as possible until we felt we had a good sense of feel of how each bow liked to be handled and shot.

The next step was to unbrace the bow and immediately measure the bows unbraced profile,and look for any defects or if there were defects before shooting;did they get worse or not.

The last step was then to judge the bows durability. We were able to look at the bows stats and remember how the bow shot for this step. There were four categories to score in the durability testing. First up was; was the bow within proper dimensions for a red oak board bow by looking at its measurements. Secondly was the visual inspection of the bow. This included any frets,tool marks,splinters,too sharp of corners,and any damage to the bow,as well as the bows tiller. Third was the bows shooting qualities. How the bow shot,accuracy,hand shock,and any other bad or good qualities. And lastly was;did the bow meet within the calculated mass weight formula for each bow. Each bow was calculated to what the bows ideal mass weight should be.and then it was compared to the actual weight of the bow. This gave us a general idea as to whether the bow was under or overbuilt.

Each of those four categories were given a 1 thru 10 score(ten being the best) by each individual. Each persons score was then added up individually.  All three individual scores were then added up and divided by three to give an average number for the bows durability.

That average durability score NUMBER was then added to the bows chronograph number for the bows TOTAL SCORE.

ALL OF THE BOWS SCORES WERE NOT ADDED UP UNTIL THE WHOLE CONTEST WAS OVER AND EACH BOW WAS TESTED AND SHOT.


Here's the bows all lined up ready to be tested. 



So first up on the chop block was Josh Baty(Josh) His is the first bow on the left. 45lbs@28"  69.5" ntn

Here is his being chronographed. It spit an arrow 147 fps




Here's Joshes at full draw



Next up was Lane Johnston(Johnston) first bow on right in upper pic with all the bows. 42lbs@28"  62.5"ntn. Here is his being chronographed at 149fps.



Here's Lanes at full draw.





Third was Matt Schenk(MattS)  41lbs@28"  this bow chronographed at 133



Here's MattS' at full draw





Fourth was Ron H. May-Pumphrey(M-P) 43lbs@28" 70 3/4"ntn

This bow concerned us all. There were heavy frets on the belly in both limbs. There tough to see in the photo



There were more but there hard to see in my photos. Also the bow was a half inch negative tiller and had a couple hinges.


 
Here's it being chronographed (we all wore safety glasses shooting this one) 137fps



I can gaurentee this bow will fail before the next hundred shots are taken. I was the last person to shoot it at the archery butt. And on my third shot I heard a tick. We immediately unbraced it.

The last bow was by Matt Wirwicki(MWirwicki) 42lbs@28" 70"nth

His chronographed at 143fps



Here's his at full draw



After each bow was individually tested it was time for a much needed lunch break. So we fired up the grill n stuffed some burgers in our faces. Sorry no pics of this..lol

Next after our lunch break we strung them all up and shot four of the five all together side by side for comparison and to see if any of us wanted to change are scoring numbers.




After we were all satisfied shooting them and set our numbers in stone,we tallied up the scores.


AND THE WINNER OFF THE RED OAK BOARD BOW COOKOFF WITH 187 POINTS IS.........

LANE JOHNSTON ........ . Congratulations Lane on a fine win. We all loved shooting your bow. It shot and grouped awesome for each of us. And was properly made with no defects. It also was the fastest bow which was a shocker. Because it has the most string follow and its the shortest bow of the bunch. Definetley cant judge a book by its cover. Well done sir. Well done

The rest of the scoring went like this.

2nd place went to Josh Baty with 181 points.  A well made an awesome looking bow Josh.
3rd went to Matt Wirwicki with 176 points. I ll give an honorable mention for the best finished looking bow to Matt. A very professionally made bow
4th went to Matt Schenk with 163 points. We all liked your bow at first and thought it was gonna be a screamer. This bow shot as good accurately and if not a hair better than lanes for me. So honorable mention for the most accurate bow.
last went to Ron H May-Pumphrey with 161 points. Ron im sorry to say this bow will not be donated. Two of the judges shot the bow well,but I did not due to the fact of the heavy frets,off tiller,and the tick on my third shot. We all feel and agreed that the bow should not be donated. Sorry. If you wanna know more please take it up in pm with me.

If anyone wants to privately or pubicly see there scorecard ,then let me know. Also if you wood like to know why your bow placed a certain place then I will let you know either thru pm or publicly. And if you wanna know what you could've done better to have made a better bow then I will give you our constructive criticism as well.

Again thanks to all and congratulations Lane.

[Josh]

Congratulations Lane!  Very nice win and outstanding bow too!  Chris, I think you guys did a GREAT and in-depth job on the judging of all the bows... Thanks for posting the results and all the pictures!   

[barefootbowhunter]

thats awesome! you mind giving your thoughts on why the shorter bow was fastest, was it because its using more limb at the 28 inch draw? really interesting stuff

[MWirwicki]

Hooray Lane!
Congratulations on your winning entry in the 1st Annual BBCO.  I think that perhaps more of the fun was reading all of the posts that led up to the scoring day.  Chris, you put together a great contest and for a good cause.  I had no idea that you would go into as much depth as you did.  I never was one for all of the technical formulas, math and physics stuff because afterall, these are relatively primitive weapons.  Mostly, I just make the bow.  That being said, it motivates myself to make an even better, faster, bionic selfbow.  What most interested me was the ideal mass weight formula.  I would like to learn more about this and where mine could have been better.  It was truly a bunch of fun.  Thanks also to Jon and Bill for helping out.  Can't wait for the 2nd BBCO!

[johnston]

Did not see this coming! Thank you for the nice comments guys.

Thanks for a fun and enjoyable contest Chris. You know that I misunderstood the purpose in the early days and said stuff that should not have been said. My bad and I am sorry. Oh, the level of testing was awesome and way over my head. Jon, Bill.. thanks for your time and expertise. I'm sure Chris appreciates your help in a big way.

This was my third bow in a row of this design and of Red Oak Board. The idea behind the bow came from some Molle dimensions that halfeye (Rich) gave me a while back. He absolutely knows what he's doing and is willing to share.

Thanks again. When does the next one start?

Lane

[Buckeye Guy]

Good stuff !!
Awesome job by all !!
Share more please!
Thanks !!
Guy

[blackhawk]

Thanks guys....im glad everyone so far is happy with how we tested them. I wanted to be as thorough as possible to ensure fairness and no whining and complaining. 

Barefoothunter im no expert yet in bow mechanics to fully answer your question. And there's lots of theories and opinions that will say such and such. But here's my stab at it. The bow has proper bend distribution within the limbs. Slightly moving fades to keep set lower in midlimb,and stiffer towards the tips or levers and stiff tips,and the bow needs to bend the most somewhere and mid limb is the best place to do that. Take a look at his tiller. It is also a semi Mollie design. As to the shortness performing well is that I think the wood is under more stress than longer and less loaded limbs. But you also can take the leverage type bows too far and not have enough limb bending to move the dead non moving static levers. This is what happened to MattS's bow. Maybe someone else can explain this better than me.

Matt Wirwicki, hey buddy. I hate to give advice to someone I think is superior to me in bowbuilding. First of all there was nothing wrong with your bow. Anyone of us wood be proud to own it. And if you make and sell bows for a living then I wouldn't change a thing. Your bow was a hair slightly overbuilt,it came in 3.5 ounces over. To make this bow better would have been to make your fade to tip width a 1/8"-1/4" narrower down the whole limb. You would not have incured any more set and picked up some more speed and a lil less handshock(although I didn't feel much in that dept.)but that's pretty picky stuff. And if you don't care about that stuff then I don't blame ya 


Lane. We all were surprised too    I think ill start the next one early june or early may and have the bows be in by july or early august so its not so close to hunting season. Unless you wanna start another one next week...lol....kidding  


Hey Guy ole buddy ole pal....I hope ya can participate in the next one 

Jon should be coming in and posting his pictures and explaining it from his point of view as well. Jon and Bill had a blast too testing and judging you guys' work.

[Matt S.]

Not surprised that mine wasn't the fastest but was surprised at how slow it was considering I had clocked it at 148 fps at 27" draw. Not questioning your testing blackhawk, just openly curious.

Fine looking bunch of bows. Thanks Chris for spending the time testing!

One question, what happened with your bow? Did you ever pike it down or just try it as it was?

[blackhawk]

Matt. First off did you weigh the arrow you used to shoot thru the chronograph? If it was a lighter arrow then you will get a faster fps number.

#2. When did you shoot it thru a chronograph? Was it while the bow was still being shot in and not many arrows thru it? If so then that also will explain a lower number reading that we got. Because if you didn't know your bow had some frets on the belly that were observed before we strung it. If that bow was tested in its fresh state before the frets happened then I can see the bow losing power.  Your bows width was borderline too narrow,which is why it fretted. As an extreme saying,It was much like a one time n done flight bow.

Both of the factors I mentioned will give a slower reading. And if im correct then that much of a difference is not surprising to me.

Bill s numbers are the numbers we went off of. If he over or underdrew then we threw that number out and reshot. We watched him from both sides everytime.  But, i did shoot yours thru the chronograph with witnesses and I got the exact same reading.

Hope this helps and you can now return and answer these questions honestly.

[MWirwicki]

As I was driving to my son's football game, I was thinking about it.  Not reading much about the mass theory and putting two and two together I was trying to figure it out myself.   I thought maybe it could have been lighter in weight.  I thought to myself, I wonder if I did overbuild it and made it too wide?

I never made a red oak board bow.  I had little faith in the wood, at the beginning.  I recall concsiously thinking that I better overbuild, as I was sure that it would fail, otherwise.  That is also why I built it 72" long and wider than my instincts told me to.  I figured, the longer the bow - the less it had to bend - the better my chances of it not breaking. 

I asked for your opinion on how I could improve my bow, the mass theory, openly and without PM'ing.  This forum is built on sharing our experiences, successes and failures.  We would be cheating those who look to this PA forum for advise, by keeping constructive criticism on the down-low.  We can all learn and improve on our skills.  Even those of us with several bows under our belts.  Thanks for the tips, Chris!

Still learning....

Matt Wirwicki

[blackhawk]

Mwirwicki...sorry. hey could you copy and paste my pm to you and post it here then for everyone else to see. I didn't save my outgoing message to you

[MWirwicki]

Chris:  Your PM...

"If you do wanna learn more about the mass formula then I highly recommend you buy the traditional bowyers bible volume 4. Steve Gardner, has a chapter on it covering it well. A lot of guys have adapted this into there bowmaking and now swear by it pretty well for the most part. The guys that have are the ones building some fast bows. Also go down to Staples or your local office supply store and pick up a digital postal scale to weigh the mass weight of your bows."


There is no need to apologize.  This is not what I meant by my previous post.  You publicly posted your advise and that's what I was after and encouraging you to do.  Thanks again.

[Buckeye Guy]

Matt and Chris
I am glad to count you folks as friends !
Thanks for sharing and caring !
Guy
 Matt let me know your latest thoughts on Mijam
We need to keep the plans rolling!

[Matt S.]

Matt. First off did you weigh the arrow you used to shoot thru the chronograph? If it was a lighter arrow then you will get a faster fps number.

#2. When did you shoot it thru a chronograph? Was it while the bow was still being shot in and not many arrows thru it? If so then that also will explain a lower number reading that we got. Because if you didn't know your bow had some frets on the belly that were observed before we strung it. If that bow was tested in its fresh state before the frets happened then I can see the bow losing power.  Your bows width was borderline too narrow,which is why it fretted. As an extreme saying,It was much like a one time n done flight bow.

Both of the factors I mentioned will give a slower reading. And if im correct then that much of a difference is not surprising to me.

Bill s numbers are the numbers we went off of. If he over or underdrew then we threw that number out and reshot. We watched him from both sides everytime.  But, i did shoot yours thru the chronograph with witnesses and I got the exact same reading.

Hope this helps and you can now return and answer these questions honestly.

I'm not doubting your testing procedures or results, just shocked and somewhat embarrassed at how mine performed. I tested its speed after shooting it in and did not observe any frets at the time (I checked carefully), so if there were signs of compression failure then i bet your hypothesis is correct. The bow was simply breaking down. Honestly, if I would have caught that sooner (frets in belly and abysmal speed) I don't think i would have sent it in. I honestly did not intend to submit a "one-shot wonder" but a durable, long lasting bow.

I know this has been a great learning experience not only for those who have participated but for all who have followed the posts. Next time the bows will be oh so much better!

Chris, I am curious about your honest opinions of my bow (besides the disappointing speed). I didn't spend ridiculous amounts of time on finishing (had to get it done in time) but how did you like the bow's aesthetics, design, shooting comfort, craftsmanship? I welcome public or private constructive criticism since I haven't handled many primitive bows made by other bowyers and welcome all insight. Don't worry about sugar coating anything either, that wouldn't help me improve at all

[blackhawk]

@Guy...huh???...a MIJAM???....count me in


Matt S. Don't be embarrassed. Speed isn't everything,as I previously stated I shot your bow the most accurately.  Which says a lot in my book. So it obviously was comfortable for us to shoot. The one shot wonder comment was just a cliche and not exactly what I meant,but to use it as an example to describe how some bows are made. Even tho not all flight bows are one shot wonders.

We all loved the aesthetics and finish of yours as soon as we pulled the bow out. Your design is definitely heading in the right direction. One thing of critique is I just measured,and double checked your scorecard and you only had 17" of real working limb. Your fades were only an inch n a half then tapered to about 7/8" where the bend stopped. That's asking a lot for a red oak board IMHO. And the frets prove that. Now you also could've made it bend a few more inches of actual working limb length. I always consider and measure out working limb length when laying out a bow and adjust the width to that instead of the actual nock to nock length. Especially if doing a lever or static recurve bow. If this bow bent further out then your widths would've been fine cus it was a pretty long bow. You also need to make sure you have enough gear (bending limb power) to move long static dead mass levers,and make sure the levers aren't too heavy. Otherwise you negate the positive effects of the enhancing leverage physics. Which I don't think proper gearing for lever bows isn't discussed and understood enough. Heck im just now starting to grasp that now thanks to this contest. I read it before,but now its sinking in.

I learned a lot thru all this as well, from day one when I posted the contest to the words im typing right now. Im glad to see im not the only one benefitting from all this. 

So how heavy of an arrow did you shoot thru a chrono with?

I only had 55" of usable length. So I strung it,put a camcorder in my wifes hand,she pressed play, I drew back,and SNAP. That's what happened to mine....lol