old article

[jamie]

for those of you that have back issues or if you dont get it. i reccomend reading a great article in volume 6 issue 2. understanding old bows. i have nothing against the scientists on this board who like to push the limits of spped and mass with their bows. we need them to keep things interesting. i myself prefer simple. something strong enough to put a point through ribs at a comfortable distance. thats what this article is about. peace

[cowboy]

Amen Jamie! That's what this newbie is into. Course later on I may start disecting what makes a bow work - it's all good. I've got a good idea what woods will make bows and what disignes will work but need the continual input here on what works good overall ..............good stuff!!!!

[Pat B]

Jamie, I'll have to look it up. You and I have the same philosophy about our archery addiction.   
     I was looking through some old issues today looking for the article by Hillary Greenland about English Elm and Holmegaard bows.  Every time I dig in my stack of old PAs I find interesting articles I had forgotten about.     Pat

[Badger]

A lot of misdirected information regarding pushing the limits. The quest for more performance has led me all the way around the block and back to square one. Low mass bows can perform pretty well, but not as well as a bow with suffiicient mass placed in the right places, My bows have gotten considerably heavier in mass, even heavier than a lot of bows that I previously thought of as overbuilt. When a bow is finished up and shot in and has only taken a whisper of set it has to have sufficient mass to do this. My mass theory does not push the limits of mass in anyway, in most cases it is the opposite, it does force the bowyer to look at where his bow his bending and where he is putting the mass, but just like learning any trade we simply have to learn some things to become proficient at what we do. A 50# bow using the same profile can vary in mass by as much as 6 oz depending on the tiller used. This past few months I have been building bows from 30# to 150# in preparing my chapter on mass. Sometimes the wood will drive the design, sometimes the design will drive the tiller, sometimes the mass will drive the design and the tiller. Adding one more tecnique to your bag of tricks can really free us up a lot when building bows with woods, draw weights, lengths or designs we are not familiar with. Steve

[jamie]

steve i gotta tell ya that your chapter is the one im looking forward to most. i would never limit my knowledge but when im hunting and i have a simple hickory d bow that has taken 2 inhes of set and 1/2 a dozen deer knowledge meens squat to me, its about something simple that works.

[DanaM]

Jamie, funny you should mention that article. I just read it yesterday, I've been buying
back issues 2 or 3 years worth at a time.
Good article, I think form follows function based on available materials, tools and what is to be hunted.

[Traxx]

My archery,is my escape from a overly technical and complicated world.

[Kegan]

I loved that article- gave me a whole new understanding of bows. I like knowing the "how" but it doesn't always help when it is going to the point where you might as well be using a CNC router (not that there is anything wrong with that). Just too muchfor me to use all at once. Simple plans are best suited for a simple person .

[Badger]

       I follow threads like this pretty closely now. Feedback on how guys enjoy their hobby has a new importance to me as I have never written any kind of articles or chapters in the past. A lot of you guys I feel like I kind of grew up with as we all started building bows seriously around the same time. I try to look at it from several perspectives, first of all my own perspective and what the sport means to me, secondly I try to have a feel for how and what the sport means to others and lastly I like to view all the versatility around here as kind of an information bank I can tap into when I need to. I am attracted to tecniques that I feel could have been used by primitive bowyers and likely were used in their own way. I read an article a few years ago about the ancient turks and their flight shooting. It talked about how they never measured the draw weight of the bow when they seperated them into classes, instead the used the mass weight of the bow, I always measured the mass weight of my bows but for the longest time had no clue what to do with it. I didn't even use a scale, I used a 1 gallon plastic water jug with lines marked on it and a ballance beam. I have always resisted the label of being tecnical, mainly because I don't have the education or the skills to be tecnical. I do enjoy the label of being a mechanic, and able to solve problems . I view bow making as a mechanical challenge. I have to believe my thinking is no different than a serious bowmakers might have been 1,000 years ago, if he was into flight shooting as I am. Actually as far as I know only a few of the flightbow builders are what I would call tecnical guys, and the few tecnical guys there are usually end up just building bows the way the rest of us do when it gets down to it. Sometimes what sounds tecnical is actually very simple and vice versa, somethings that sound simple seem actually pretty tecnical to me. Steve

[Kegan]

Badger- You couldn't be more right! SOme of the "difficult" concepts are pretty simple and versatile once the basic understanding is achieved. Where as the "simple" concepts become intricate once you delve into them a little bit. Buit as long as it's "primitive" it's wets everyones apetite a little. There was alot more to "carving sticks" around long ago- back when they had to fine tune it by hand and relied so heavily on what they were doing. They knew all of what was going into their bows. ALL of it