Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 136 i Bow International

I was struck by a comment from ArcheryGB's Jon Nott in the last issue, during an illuminating discussion on sustainability and consumables. He said: “The amount of times I've seen someone with an old set of arrows with a brand new bow. You'd have been better off with that older bow and a brand new set of arrows.” Looking around at various quivers at my club of a Saturday morning, he wasn't wrong. I've been lucky enough to watch the elite many times, and it's noticeable how much they preen and check the contents of their quivers. (I've been told that Takaharu Furukawa, the silver medallist at London 2012, likes to refletch all his arrows every night, and I'm still waiting for an opportunity to ask him if that's the…

Competitive archers are always looking for an advantage and constantly musing over how they can improve their equipment. Arrows are always high on the list with questions like: "can my choice of shaft buy me points, will one set of arrows be better than another, is one manufacturer the go to brand and how do I ensure that they are the right spine for me?" After all, you do not want to spend all those hours training to be let down by a crucial piece of equipment. Arrows are the most important piece of equipment that you need to spend time getting right (after you have sorted out your draw weight). Choosing the wrong specification may end up being an expensive mistake and will reduce your scores. Here I will…

Pin nocks are by far the most popular choice for top shooters. I fit them pretty much as a standard item for my customers. Regular insert nocks have an post that press-fits inside the shaft, whereas the pin nock has a hollow chamber. The rear of the arrow it fitted with a small aluminium post known as a pin adapter. The post of the adapter fits inside the pin nock. The pin nock system has a few distinct advantages over the insert system. Firstly, it makes changing nocks really easy. So much so that it can be done as a running repair during a round. Just pull of the nock to be changed and press the new one on. Secondly, the metal pin that sits inside the arrow shields the…

For indoor shooting (e.g. WA 18) the use of thicker arrow shafts instead of thinner ones is discussed again and again. Do thicker arrows really bring a significant score point gain? The advantage of thicker arrows for the short indoor distance of 18m can be explained pragmatically: thicker arrows on the small 40cm target face result in additional score points because they cover a larger area than the 'normal' arrows (thinner arrows) and thus more frequently touch the boundary line to the next higher ring. Opinions differ as to how many additional points can be gained with the thicker arrow shafts. Often it is argued with personal experience. Some think they have seen a clear increase in points with thicker arrows, others can't tell the difference. Thus the general question…

The semi-official outdoor season closer of the World Cup Final has been held in all sorts of places. Last year it was held on a helipad in the sturdy but desperately unremarkable port town of Samsun in Turkey, on the shores of the Black Sea. This, it has to said, was somewhat of a comedown after the 2013 edition in Paris in front of the Eiffel Tower with 2,500 Parisians doing Mexican waves around the vast arena. The vagaries of who can and will be able to host being what they are, a wide variety of options are not always available. But this year, a long-mooted competition in Russia finally came off, and it turned out to be a coronation of the very best on the circuit. A preamble event…

MORE COUNTRIES ACHIEVE OLYMPIC QUOTAS Spain has been officially awarded a recurve men’s quota place for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games for Pablo Acha’s bronze medal at the 2019 European Games in Minsk, Belarus. There was a delay in confirming the spot due to an investigation into an appeal regarding an earlier match involving Sjef van den Berg and Dan Olaru. The Netherlands were awarded a women's place at the same event. Archers from the USA, Brazil, Canada and Colombia won Olympic quota places at the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, Peru, bringing the total number of countries qualified for the archery competition next year to 27. Four of the five continental Games, which act as Olympic qualifiers, have now taken place, and 75 of the 128 places available…

It always astonishes me when I hear phrases from regular archers like: "I don’t put much effort in my wooden arrows because they will never be as good as carbon anyway." And even: "I never make my own arrows! Why would I?" Yet the same archers worry endlessly about the brace height of their bow because "archery is all about consistency." I think the importance of well-matched wooden arrows is sometimes overlooked in the trad world. Of course, many archers have no ambition at all to shoot the ‘perfect’ arrow with a ‘perfect’ technique from a ‘perfect’ bow. Many traditional archers would argue (maybe jokingly) that’s what recurve and compound archery are for. However if you would like to find out just how accurate a traditional bow with wooden arrows…

Since Archery GB produced their 2017 ‘A guide to field archery courses’ there has been much debate over the length and width of overshoot zones for field archery. Archery GB recommends that the furthest boundary of the overshoot zone extends 102 metres behind a 60 metre target and never be less than 140 metres from shooting peg to boundary when using a release aid on flat ground. This template is a massive increase in safety distances over earlier safety templates, the most infamous of which was the IFAA short distance template which implied that 26 yards behind a 20-yard target was in a safe zone! Archery GB suggest you can decrease the overshoot by using a bank or hillside as a backstop, or if necessary increase it further if the…

I NOTE YOU CAN ACHIEVE THE UK CLASSIFICATIONS (SUCH AS MASTER BOWMAN) SHOOTING EITHER METRIC OR IMPERIAL DISTANCES. BOTH ARE AVAILABLE TO ME. APART FROM ACCESSIBILITY OF COMPETITIONS, IS THERE ANY ADVANTAGE IN SHOOTING ONE OR THE OTHER? Most UK archery achievement classifications such as Master Bowman can be achieved shooting metric rounds (such as a WA1440) or imperial distances (such as a York). Each involves shooting long distances; 90m or 100yds for senior men. I have studied archer scores at different distances over many years and have found that they can be modelled mathematically very well. (You can find my recent published paper in that area at: https://bit.ly/2kvcZ0X) The distance of an archer’s arrows from the centre of the target is normally distributed and the standard deviation can be…

The modern incarnation of barrelling in arrows is the Easton X10, developed in the mid-90s by Jim Easton and George Tekmitchov, specifically for long-distance shooting. Since then, it has been extraordinarily successful, particularly in the context of the Olympics, then as now the pinnacle of the recurve sport. (Easton usually run a wry ad in the wake of every Summer Games, pointing out that once again, every archer on the podium used their product to take a medal. ) Tapered shafts have been in use for thousands of years. By tapering and thinning the back of the arrow and keeping the same diameter in the front of the shaft, arrows gain better performance. A tapered shape reduces drag while producing a higher front-of-centre balance, essential for good ballistics. Fully barrelled…

Shortly after the archery World Cup event in Berlin this year, the Olympiastadion almost immediately geared back up for another archery event. This was the German national championships, but included as part of a weekend multi-sport event event called ‘Die Finals’ (The Finals). This took annual national championships in ten sports – archery, track cycling, road cycling, athletics, boxing, canoeing, swimming, triathlon, gymnastics and modern pentathlon – and bundled them together into a single event across the capital. The results were spectacular. The organisers were hoping to sell 70,000 tickets, in the end, 178,000 turned out across the two days. Archery was free to attend – and packed out – but even more importantly, the accumulated viewing figures for the sport topped out at 1.5 million, beaten in the ratings…

When we start out in archery arrows are just seen as necessary components, and they all just have fletchings on. Even beginners with limited technical knowledge understand the function of fletchings, but don't really pay much more attention to them beyond selecting the size, shape and colour. As time goes by archers start to see subtle differences on colleague's and competitor's arrows, and eyes get opened to the fact that there's multiple types and ways of applying fletchings to a shaft. In this article, we're going to be taking a look at the very popular option of helical fletching. Helical fletching settles an arrow faster by offering an increased amount of gyroscopic stabilisation via a higher drag factor. The word helical is derived from the word “helix” and means to…

This article is meant as both a good starting point for those who want to make their own wooden arrows and for those that are looking for some extra information. If you’re already quite experienced and looking for a next step in arrow making, I recently made a video on advanced arrow making techniques that should keep you busy for a while! You can find it under our Youtube channel called ’Triple Trouble Archery’. Also please feel free to ask questions and let me know how you’re getting on! You can reach me through my Instagram: @ thejaapbolt or Facebook page: ByBolt.…

Of the five arrow profiles recovered from the Tudor warship Mary Rose, two are of particular note; those that taper from a thicker centre to both head and string nock, and those that taper from head and nock towards a central depression. They are known respectively as ‘barrelled’, and ‘saddled’ (alternatively ‘doubly barrelled'). The first has survived and the second has not. We will look at each in turn. Although Roger Ascham, author of Toxophilus or The Schole of Shotinge is explicit on many aspects of equipment, and the barrelled arrow was almost certainly known to him, nowhere does he refer to it specifically, or in terms that we might understand. We are therefore denied a contemporary assessment of its qualities and perhaps its especial purpose. He refers instead to…

It’s not long until the indoor season, and Easton has announced an innovative, more technically advanced indoor arrow shaft for recurve finger shooters – the all-new RX7 series. The new RX7 7178 aluminium shafts incorporate a rear taper that allows recurve archers to shoot a bigger arrow at a lower bow weight with less point weight. This allows shooters to maintain maximum shaft diameter for higher scoring potential. Available in three spines: 525, 475, and 420, in 21, 22, and 23 diameters. This size mix spans recurve bow weights from 30-52 lbs and draw lengths from 23 to 32.5 inches. The RX7 is based on the same proven design principle as the X10 and A/C/E shafts, with a flexible, forgiving rear taper. This design element drops the dynamic spine of…