string follow,good bad or ugly?

[DC]

Badger,, I keep thinking bout that,, I have a bow that does not recover,, it has string follow, but nice cast,, until you said that I wasl totally confused,,

  Brad, I know you have been at this long time as I have. It took about 15 years or more before I realized this. The recovery actually starts the minute you let go of the string but it is much slower than the arrow so you don't get any benefit from it. So if a bow has 1 1/2" and recovers after 1/2 hour it might actually have 3" at the moment you take the shot.

 

Every once in a while someone says something that just seems right. This is one of those. Thanks Badger

[PatM]

That doesn't mean it is right.

[DC]

No, but until someone comes along with something that seems righter. it'll do

[Badger]

That doesn't mean it is right.

  Pat, I actually tested it. It was somewhat by accident that I discovered this. A real pain in the ass to test so I won't ever test it again but I feel it told me what I needed to know.

  recovery of set happens in stages. lets say a bow has 3" of set, the first 1/2" might recover in 1/10 of a second the second 1/2" might take 3 seconds, the third 30 seconds, each phase will take longer. Any phase slower than the arrow is hysterisis.

[sleek]

TBB V material right here.

[BowEd]

Badger....So what your saying is you think immediate checking of degree of reflex after shooting does not mean what the arrow is getting.

[PatM]

That doesn't mean it is right.

  Pat, I actually tested it. It was somewhat by accident that I discovered this. A real pain in the ass to test so I won't ever test it again but I feel it told me what I needed to know.

  recovery of set happens in stages. lets say a bow has 3" of set, the first 1/2" might recover in 1/10 of a second the second 1/2" might take 3 seconds, the third 30 seconds, each phase will take longer. Any phase slower than the arrow is hysterisis.

  Describe your test.

[bradsmith2010]

Pat I love your attitude,

[Badger]

That doesn't mean it is right.

  Pat, I actually tested it. It was somewhat by accident that I discovered this. A real pain in the ass to test so I won't ever test it again but I feel it told me what I needed to know.

  recovery of set happens in stages. lets say a bow has 3" of set, the first 1/2" might recover in 1/10 of a second the second 1/2" might take 3 seconds, the third 30 seconds, each phase will take longer. Any phase slower than the arrow is hysterisis.

  Describe your test.

  Several premises in invoved, A fiberglass bow and an all wood bow have 1 major difference. This is hysterisis, Fiberglass bows have less than 2%. Because of this you can work out the virtual mass on a fiberglass bow by carefully calculating stored energy, chronoing the bow and determining the efficiency. Once you know the virtual mass you can easily extrapolate expected speeds of different arrow weights with pretty good accuracy. This does not hold true for a bow with hsyterisis because hysterisis is also time sensitive, the faster the arrow leaves the bow the more hysterisis it will have. This makes it almost impossible to really apply a meaningful virtual mass to a wooden bow. About the closest we can get is to check the efficiency of an extremely heavy arrow and go from there. What I found by testing bows prior to taking set at shorter draw lengths that hysterisis was almost non existent and I could accurately establish a virtual mass and extrapolate arrow speeds just like with fiberglass bows. As the bow was drawn out further and started to take even small amounts of set this method would quickly collapse. I don't want to go into a lot of detail because it is more writing than I feel like doing but this is the basic method I used to test it.

[sleek]

Love it.

[BowEd]

Quite the process,compromises,and attention to detail of materials taking huge amounts of time invested.Doing this with many different types of bows had to take even more time,and as accurately as can be done I would say given the type of materials used.More than most will do and many have benefited from your research.Even FG bow makers too.
Still making and shooting a broke in primitive bow that took very little hard set from tillering[under an inch] and shows very little soft set[under an inch] after being shot a couple of hours are and have always been the priority.Reducing the amount of noticable hysterisis a bow has.Showing me the limbs are not stressed and will stand the test of time.Just like over by you.I have the luxury of shooting with a couple of bow makers here especially one that does quite extensive testing himself.
There are definitely designs in primitive bows that will out shoot common FG bows here,but if their designs are made properly they still can get the upper hand over a longer stretches of time is what we've found just because of their practically 0 hysterisis materials.Not very noticable but still noticable.Even then some FG bows designed to the edge can and will fly apart or delaminate a bit with a fly apart on the horizon....lol.

[PatM]

I really don't see how that proves that the bow might have  three inches of set during the shot process.

[Badger]

I really don't see how that proves that the bow might have  three inches of set during the shot process.

     Pat, the 3" is not a hard number, it simply shows that a bow has more set than we see when we unbrace it.

[Marc St Louis]

I'm currently working on a bow that have around 50 arrows through it and it's holding it's profile well.i braced it and let it sweat for 5 hours.unbraced it's profile changed by 1-3/4",ten minutes later the profile. Was almost back to where it started.having noticed this before but not to such a degree.thoughts,bush!

Have you made any other bows from this same wood source?

[Badly Bent]

I'm currently working on a bow that have around 50 arrows through it and it's holding it's profile well.i braced it and let it sweat for 5 hours.unbraced it's profile changed by 1-3/4",ten minutes later the profile. Was almost back to where it started.having noticed this before but not to such a degree.thoughts,bush!

Rob, I've experienced the same thing on a couple of elm bows I made recently. Both were heavily heat treated with a fair amount of reflex added in. Set after tillering was about average but the bows seemed to follow the string a bit much after
each shooting session of 50 or so arrows. Both recovered back to the same amount of reflex that they held prior to the shooting session within 10 to 30 minutes after unstringing depending upon how long they were braced. What I noticed
about these bows is that they didn't snap back to their original profile right at the time of unstringing like the better shooting bows I have seem to do. I'm thinking this is something in the property of this batch of elm.
Could be my workmanship or the design at play though.