Tag Archives: tips

Jul 8 2014

Balance point of arrows – or a simple hack

A friend posted this on our clubs Facebook site and I thought it was a really simple and great idea, so I thought I would share it with all my readers, but as I said to him on Sunday. “I hope its not your best carving knife.”

life hack for arrow balancing

life hack for arrow balancing

When trying to identify the balance point of your newly made wooden arrows it can prove very fiddly and there are lots of people and sites that suggest you can bend a piece of metal at a right angle etc. and use that. Well here is a very simple and quick way of doing this. Only one piece of advice take care and not to damage the arrow on the blade if its sharp…
As the “designer”  says is a “Simple hack and I’m sure you’ve all got this already. I was looking for a way to mark the balance point of my arrows and came up with the “ram a sharp knife into a block of wood” method.
Patent pending.
Surprising how different they all are!” Nice one Campbell
Thanks for reading.

Jul 3 2014

Wear and tear on fingers

There was a recent blog post (Charles’ Archery Blog) on finger injuries and finger tabs, here’s a  Link to it
For that reason I thought I would post this observation about my own shooting and finger damage. I know it may not look much but believe me it hurts lots and I’ve found I can only shoot about 20 arrows before it becomes a serious problem.
finger wear and tear

Finger wear and tear

As you can see a callous has developed on the tip with the skin being very rough with it splitting and bruising developed.
I’ve avoided shooting for a couple of weeks to give it more time to heal, with the photo above showing what it was like after a week.

So what is causing it?

I think this was  something that developed after the Lyme valley shoot (Shoot report) where most people got soaked. This resulted in my hand got very wet and the skin cracking on the ring finger. The dye from my tab leached into the skin and it looked more like an open wound then cracked skin.

The effect of this on my draw is in an uneven draw and bruising on the ring finger and pain in the fingertip on the draw up and release. I’ve tried applying tape to the finger tip for protection but this doesn’t help.
I have found that Savlon intensive healing skin cream has helped the healing process too and is now an addition to my kit.
I think part of the problem is I’ve developed bad form in my draw which results in an uneven distribution of pressure across the three fingers. I think I’m going to have to work on my consistency of draw to ensure even draw weight on all fingers.
In addition, rather than going for a deep anchor into the first joint of the finger I’ve overtime let it slip to the finger tips. 
I’m also going to spend some time looking at my tab and wear patterns. I might look at adding another layer to it.
So guess it will be coach coach thy self. Hope this helps
Thanks for reading.

Jun 18 2014

Literature review – Wooden Arrow Making – a Presentation by John Marshall

Recently a friend of mine and fellow Severn Valley club member posted a link on our club private Facebook site to a hand-out for those interested in making wooden arrows. It was originally written in 2005 by John Marshall of Brixham Archers.

I’ve included the link he posted here http://savagearcher.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Arrow-Workshop.pdf

I’ve also managed to find the original site

http://www.brixhamarchers.co.uk/web/pages/info/setup_homepage.html

It is a really good beginners resource, with clear instructions and lots of useful information which is easy to read.

Well worth a look and good starting point.

Thanks for reading