Long draw, short arrow

It is easy to concentrate on arrow speed  but put off figuring out how to get a consistent clean shot.  It is hard to do and takes time. The ideal projectile is short, stiff, and not forgiving of errors.  The ideal draw length is much longer than the arrow, so it is no surprise that a little misalignment would send an arrow out of the bow tumbling end over end.

George Alavekiu struggled with getting clean arrow flight and wrote about it often in his letters. In one of the letters is a statement that these bows could shoot over 2500 yards if the arrow would just come out clean. In these letters is lots of interesting correspondence with target crossbow shooter Gil Frey.  Gil recommended a trackless design with a D-loop on the string to help solve the issue.  For whatever reason, George did not follow through with this advice and kept with the standard crossbow arrow tracks and release claw.  I believe it was driven by his need to shoot very short arrows made of steel.  George tried putting arrows under the arrow tracks in an effort to keep them from jumping out but these approaches only resulted in modest improvements.  A few years back, I decided against arrow tracks when I tried test shooting George's old bows and found it was probably only an occasional lucky shot that gave him his best distances.  I am sure the majority of the shots resulted in sideways arrows and relatively poor distances.  I feel the same is true for Harry Drake's foot bow record.

I don't live anywhere near a place where I can actually flight shoot, so the next best thing is to test shoot into a soft target to prevent damage to the arrows.  I use a form of paper tuning because I can't actually see the arrow leave the bow.  The piece of paper sits out on a long stabilizer-like support and I analyze the size and shape of the holes left by the arrow to determine if the arrow is leaving the bow perfectly straight, or if it is point up or down, or side to side.  If the bow was shooting perfect, I would expect to see a single circular hole left in the paper with each successive arrow going through the same hole.  

For the test arrows, I am using very short steel and composite arrows that are as little as 7-1/4 inches long.  The shorter the arrow and longer the draw, the less forgiving the bow will be of errors in the tuning and set-up.   I figure if I can get consistent flight with these short arrows, then it should be much easier to get clean flight with the 14-16 inch long arrows that I plan to use at the Salt Flats this August.  To complicate the issue even further, my test arrows vary in geometry and weight.  I rarely have build my flight arrows completely uniform.  Some are heavier than others.  Some are a little stiffer than others.  The competition limits the amount of arrows we can shoot, and there is not a lot of time to figure out which arrow design is the perfect match for the bow that I will be shooting.

The test bow limbs that I am using are much lower in draw weight than the bow limbs that I will be using in August.  I am often test shooting this contraption in my house, and I want to limit the possible damage to the bow, arrow and living room if something goes wrong at over 700 feet per second!  The test bow limbs limit the arrow speeds between 300 and 400 feet per second, which is much more manageable.  So far, I have several hundred test shots on a single set of bow limbs without any sign of failure. The arrow rest and release are both mounted to a sliding "carriage" so that I can draw the short arrow back farther than the length of the arrow.  This also reduces the chances that the arrow pops off the rest or off the string as the bow is drawn.  My goal is to be able to achieve consistent and clean flight with an arrow drawn nearly twice as far as the arrow is long!

Beginning a couple months ago, I made this bow test into a sort of a game.  I set it up and try to achieve perfect holes in the paper with a random set of arrows and draw lengths.  At first, I got pretty crazy results.  I even put a couple holes in the bow riser (see below) and this wasn't even close to using a draw length double the arrow length. 

Chaotic paper tears indicating a tuning issue

Bow Shown with arrow being drawn back

I was also getting frustrated with the durability of my arrow rests (see photo below).  They were made from thick mylar and would start to come apart after only a couple of shots. I switched to a much thinner mylar rest that is used for overhead projector transparencies and doubled them up if I needed more support.

I was able to progress to the point where I could achieve several clean holes, but this would be followed by an occasional wild flying arrow.  It took awhile, but I realized that the very short D-loop I was using was probably the main contributor.  I assume that the release loop would snag itself on the arrow nock and cause all sorts of issues.  Some of the test arrows even shows evidence of this when I would notice one ear of the nock would be bent after an erratic shot.  When I replaced the short D-loop with a longer one, the issue went away.

Mylar Arrow Rest Damage After Two Shots

Much better, three different arrows, three different draw lengths, all pretty clean holes in the paper.

Another view of the test setup with arrow nocked.

I started using post-it notes to minimize changing the paper.

I am applying a little lip-stick to the arrow point which leaves a mark in the paper so I can tell which part of the paper tear is from the arrow point, and which part of the tear is from the nock end.

Comparison of arrow length to Draw Length.

I am now able to consistently draw one of these seven inch long arrows 13 or more inches without issue.  This is a big deal given my bow does not make use of crossbow-like arrow tracks.  I'm getting more excited than ever to see what this bow will do in August!