Founding a new worldwide Primitive flightbow federation?

[avcase]

I used to feel more equipment and weight divisions would be useful, but feel less that way over time. After awhile, we end up with more equipment divisions than competitors to shoot in them and the competition aspect of the sport gets watered down.

I feel there should be some sound logic that drives the creation of new bow divisions. The easiest rules to enforce are those where the form of the bow is determined by the intended job it is required to do. In other words form follows function. Where we tend to run into problems is when we try to create a category for a bow type that falls outside the original intended purpose for a group of bows.

For example, the purpose of a flight bow is to see how far one can throw an arrow. The purpose of a hunting bow is to be durable, easy to carry, reliable, quiet, and capable of throwing a heavy arrow through an animal at close range. The purpose for a target bow is to be extremely repeatable, and easy to draw and aim for shot after shot.

What usually happens when a competition is created for bows that do not match the original intended purpose of the bow?  What happens is that we eventually end up with odd hybrid bows that are created in order to meet the minimum rules requirements and set a record, but probably wouldn't necessarily be very useful for the bow's original purpose. This is why we end up with English Long Bows with stiff inner and outer limbs or "target bows" with one-off flight bow style limbs, shooting very light under spined arrows.

Go to a 3D target shoot sometime. The 3D shoot was created to simulate hunting situations using hunting equipment, but people have learned that they have a better chance of winning the event if they shoot light weight bows with light 5ggp arrows.  They wouldn't use that equipment for a real hunt.

I feel the broadhead flights are fun, but kind of goofy too.  No one creates a set of Broadheads to see how far they can be launched.  On the other hand, the war bow events do make a lot of sense. The purpose of a war bow is to deliver an arrow of substantial weight a long distance. 

Just some thoughts.

Alan

[Badger]

  Allen, that is my feeling exactly, thats why I suggested something like traditional classes. Regular flight and traditional using a bow as intended. This would not create too many classes I believe. I don't think at first at least most events would not have enough contenders to shoot in all classes anyway.

[Ian.]

It's nice to see this discussion taking place, and about time there was some body to bring flight shooters the world over together.

I can really only speak from the warbow side of things and all I wanted to say was something cautionary; all the sources exist online to create a very accurate warbow spec, ignore as someone put it, 'the tight around the collar societies' they aren't going for historical accuracy nor should their spec even be referenced for accuracy.

[Marc St Louis]

I was a bit put off with some of the rules years ago especially when my HHB warbow was disqualified by Dan simply because it wasn't quite round enough yet I had read at the time that bows like this were being used for competition overseas.  I wasn't a happy camper

[avcase]

Marc,
What happened with your war bow was unfortunate. This kind of problem occurs any time that a set of rules is written up for a traditional division such as the "English Long Bow". If I would have been preparing a bow for that same event, then I would have made my bow with a flat-ish belly also. The problem is that no two people have the same idea of what represents a historical or traditional style of bow. The same kind of issue happens with traditional target bow competitions.

Alan

[Badger]

  Mark, you are correct. I have always felt that was a bad call. String bridges either glued or tied on are something else I would like to see allowed on self bows.

[avcase]

Steve,
If glued on string bridges are allowed, then you have to get very specific. Otherwise, someone like me would glue on an entire belly lamination and call it string bridge.

That reminds me of some  issues that came up with the Self Bow division in the past. The rules stated that nock overlays were allowed, but didn't state anything else to prevent someone from making them so large as to create the equivalent of a backed bow. Eventually, a two inch long maximum was written into the rules.

Another issue with the self bow rules was that there wasn't anything blocking someone from kerfing the limb down to the handle and rejoining the kerfs to create the equivalent of a backed bow.  This loophole might still need attention.

Alan

[Badger]

  Good points Allen. Anything affecting the strutural integrity would have to be ruled out. What about combining multi lam bows and simple backed bows into one class? As long as they are all wood or bamboo. I have seen advantages in building multilam bows as they are easier but not really any advantage that I can see in performance beyond the ability to stretch design features a bit further.

[PatM]

There really is something to be said for just having one class. If you want to compete with your longbow be prepared to go up against a static recurve. Ultimately you're still going to compare your shot against everyone else anyway.

[redhawk55]

The discussion is speeding up!

I guess we' ve to ban Alan for posting instructions how to break the rules?!

Records are shot for to be broken, rules are set for to be broken!

I guess we have to know what we want.
Form follows function! The function is flight!

Above all that's a primitive flightbow club.

My opinion about rules:

Natural materials only!!!!

4 weight classes: 35lbs, 50lbs, 65 or 75lbs, unlimited, each divided into youth, female and male.

Bow classes

selfbow: one piece of wood, not composed in length, width and thickness, overlays clearly defined in length, width and thickness, no glued on adds at the handle, handle 8" in length max., 11/4" in width and thickness, reflex or recurve 4" max.
This class should include warbows and longbows too, I really want to see compete shorties vs. longies, flats vs. warbows...................................................

composite bow: could be composed in length, width and thickness, handle see above, reflex and recurve unlimited( they are limiting themselves?), should include yumis and hornbows too, since decades hornbowyers are claiming to be the " creme de la creme", they could prove it now!

Unlimited: everything allowed, string- bridges as a belly- lam..............etc., no handle- limitations, it should include footbows, excited to see how this will turn out. No weight classes, no age, no gender.

This  sounds less but will be a total of 25 classes, that' s enough?

Sorry, but I don't see a broadhead- class in a flight- tournament, maybe as a mix of flight and penetration- measurement?

Natural strings only! I hope this will end up in better strings. The English warbowyers, the Osmanian bowyers and other bowyers got it, we still have our problems not overcome, time to get it.

Arrows: I guess we've to limit a min. weight for safety- reasons, what about the length? Wouldn`t it be much clearer to limit  the min. draw to 19", measured from the bow`s belly ? Fletchings and tips are limiting themselves.

I think for to make primitive flightshooting more popular it is inevitable to reduce classes, organizing a tournament will be easier, competition between the different designs and classes will be heated up.

I really would like to see my beloved "inuitish- styled shorties" compete with an American flat or a warbow, even I' ve to end up with the insight that an other design performed better. It will make me rethinking the design, improving or leaving it for another design.

Primarily I see the club as a possibility to improve the performance of wooden bows and arrows, to change ideas, to compete and to have some great fun with other flightbow- addicts.

Michael

[Del the cat]

Not sure why you need classes for gender or age?
Surely the draw weight will limit participation anyway.
Else you get the situation where a particularly strong youth or female can become the only competitor in their class.
Why should a youth or woman shooting a 35# bow get an special consideration over a balding old git like me shooting one?
And if they are strong enough to shoot a 75# bow, again do they need patronizing by giving them their own category?
Maybe a category for us baldies
Del

[PatM]

I actually think a selfbow should be allowed a glued on handle piece. It's not contributing to the power of the stave in a working sense.
 Still don't see the reason to have multiple bow type classes.

[Del the cat]

On the subject of natural strings, although we have the internet and E-bay, it's possibly harder to source good quality long fibre natural materials as the producer is probably going for quantity rather than quality.
In days gone by there would have been specialists growing the good stuff I expect...
Anyone who has tried to find decent long fibre hemp cord will have noticed, it's pretty poor stuff
Del

[Jules]

From a true 'traditional flight shoot' point of view I'd say yes to natural strings only. From a 'do you want a low threshold for people to join these events' point of view I'd say this is wishful thinking. I would favour a more accessible event to a specialist one.

If you want to include a truly traditional class that's fine but don't force it on all classes.

[Badger]

   Good to see a conversation taking place. My first priority in promoting primitive flight archery is to keep it from going extinct. If we were an animal species we would have been captured and put into captive breeding programs decades ago. Thats how rare we have become, the purpose of flight archery is to simply see how far you can cast an arrow. Taken one step further flight archery is also a method of seeing how well a bow can perform as it was intended.

    The great majority of bow builders are building traditional varieties of bows, hunting and target shooting bows. These bows are not designed specificaly to shoot ultra light arrows abd should be tested as they are meant to be shot. For this reason I would like to see two distinct categories.
Regular flight categories with rules very similar to the current flight rules allready written, any bow could compete here or the archer could choose to compete in what we would call traditional classes where bows were tested using draw lengths and arrow weights more in line with how the bows were intended.

     There could be a lot of advantages to traditional classes and I suspect they would become the most popular. If they shot grains per pound it would level the playing field and allow archers to bring their favorite bow the the flight shoot without dropping the weight to meet a weight class.

     All trad classes could be set up with the same basic rules. no less than 8 grains per pound arow weight, no arrows shorter than 24". I can't see where we have all that many different types of trad bows.  American long bows, recurves, english long bows, war bows, yumi bows and asiatic. I would enjoy seeing a class for the short native style bows also, say under 56" long.

    The value of traditional classes is hard to overstate. Its a great way for a single bowyer to have something to compare his work to. It gives us a good honest look at how various styles actualy perform and gives an opportunity for good bowyers to get some validation for the good work they do.

     In conclusion, I will be pushing for regular flight classes as currently written and an entirely new category of tradtional flight which we will have to write from scratch.