Jul 12 2012

Excellent basic introduction to arrows.

jordansequillion's avatarJordan Sequillion

Since arrows are extremely important for an archer, I thought I would do a couple of blogs about arrows starting with the various components. I will be focusing on arrows for recurve target archers, since there are a lot of articles about arrows for both compound and traditional archery already. Selecting the correct arrows for your best performance is not simple task. There are tons of things to know and understand and it may require some trial and error. In this first blog we will start with the basic components.

An arrow is comprised of four major components the shaft, the point, the nock and the fletching.

Shaft : The shaft is primary structural component of the arrow and all other components are attached to it. Originally arrows shafts were made from wood however new shafts are made from aluminum, carbon fibre or both.  It is very important to properly…

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Jul 12 2012

New toy – tapering jig for wooden arrows

I recently saw at one of the trade stands at the 3D champs retailer selling tapering jigs.

Taper jig

Taper jig

Lee Philips has produced a jig that allows arrow makers to taper wooden shafts down for barreling of arrows. Sadly I didn’t get chance to buy one at the event but ordered one which arrived at the weekend.

I’m yet to use it but am very impressed by the construction, just need to find some shafts to try it out.

close up of taper jig

close up of taper jig, you can see the feed into the sanding blocks

Will give a full review once I’ve tried it out.

Jul 9 2012

How do you cope with failure: the missed shot or poor score?

missed target

Effects of missing a target

I’m curious to know how other archers cope with this. We all have bad days and poor shots, but how do you cope or overcome this so it doesn’t affect your next shot or even your entire day?
I suffer from this really badly.
If I blank a target, i.e. don’t get a scoring arrow out of the 3 arrows attempts allowed I get really down. This affects my shooting. I become less fluid in my movements, more tense in my draw; start second guessing distances and angles. I start fiddling with my coat or arm brace etc. I get frustrated with myself as I keep saying to myself it over, move on but this doesn’t always work.

I don’t think it helps that I tend to have a memory that remembers things like shots that I’ve taken.  I tend to approach targets and think “I shot something like this distance before and aimed here, but missed so need to be a little higher or to the left” etc.  Since I don’t gap shoot or use sights, my image maps and target distances are all based on previous shooting experience.

I’m talking from a keen archer who, in the past has won a couple of local shoots, but  is never going to be world class like those in the Olympics, but there must be techniques for overcoming such mind sets. Olympic archers or bow hunters must have methods of putting the shot behind them and moving on.

So how do other archers cope?
How do you overcome self induced stress and frustration?
I would be really interested in hearing from others on this.
Thanks for reading.