Shelfs - I prefer to shoot off my bow hand (wearing a bow hand glove) using typical English style longbows and would only add a shelf or cut-in a shelf if I made a laminate or flat bow.
What are your thoughts?
Arrow Plates - I see polished horn and/or shell used as an arrow plate, but here my feelings are mixed. My ELB Bowyer doesn’t add one and I felt like I was ‘missing’ out on my bow, so I asked their reasoning ‘why?’ they don’t add one.
Their reply was all about the spine of wood arrows; that a properly spine matched arrow to the bow and archer doesn’t need one, that the arrow will not bear on that area at all.
At a shoot over the weekend, someone else with a hybrid self-bow had a horn plate with tremendous arrow ‘slap’ when shot. I now believe today that their spine was too stiff, and that yes indeed, carbon arrows are wicked noisy.
Looking at my bow in retrospect, there is barely a mark on it where the arrow passes the handle and my bowhand glove shows zero signs of any arrow or feather passing.
What is your experience? Or, when do YOU add either?
