[American Flatbow] Arrow spine for Slick Stick bow?

blakey

Active member
Dhansak;754034 You all know I have to shoot it ... as soon as possible.....! Do you think my wifes 30-35lbs POC arrows would be safe for a couple of shots?; or just shoot my xx75 1916s (plastic vanes as I have no feathers yet...) This is not in the least frustrating :) - but in a good way - I have a Slick Stick! :) :)[/QUOTE said:
I think it will be really interesting to try your wife's arrows, to see how weak they shoot, if at all. Sometimes you can snap arrows if they are really weak, but I don't think that will be the case. Yours should be near enough, and it will give you some guidance on what spine you actually need. I'd be interested to hear how you get on. :)
 

Dhansak

Member
Hi blakey - looking forward to trying but there are more minor bumps in the road lol.

1) One missing arrow shelf pad - irritating but easily remedied
2) Just read the label on the whisper string - it's a 10 strand. Their website explicitly says that 10 strands are for bows above 40lbs; my 30 pounder should be an 8 strand... does it matter that much? - I have no clue but don't want to hurt the bow. So it's to be yet another email.

On the plus side I have the bow in my hands - just can't play yet!
 

diacritica

Member
Hi blakey - looking forward to trying but there are more minor bumps in the road lol.

1) One missing arrow shelf pad - irritating but easily remedied
2) Just read the label on the whisper string - it's a 10 strand. Their website explicitly says that 10 strands are for bows above 40lbs; my 30 pounder should be an 8 strand... does it matter that much? - I have no clue but don't want to hurt the bow. So it's to be yet another email.

On the plus side I have the bow in my hands - just can't play yet!
You're nearly there!!

So 1), not having the arrow shelf pad doesn't look like a big deal. If you have enough rest, give priority to the arrow shelf and leave the arrow plate nude for the time being.
And 2) either 8 or 10 strand are OK, really. Henry Bodnik uses an 8-strand string for his 53lbs bow. They are interchangeable. They try to give you the lightest string for your poundage. Less mass = less absorption and faster arrow speeds but it's negligible. It would never prevent me from trying the bow. As I always keep a spare string I would order an 8-strand string and keep the 10-strand as a backup anyway. If you want to return it, avoid putting the string nock, that's all.

The way I see it, you have a great bow with perhaps no arrow plate, decent wooden arrows and a conservative 10-strand string. Go for it! and share the pics. Photo or didn't happen :)
 

Dhansak

Member
Thanks diacritica - it hasn't happened yet but pic will follow when it does lol.

Had one of those days and stuff got in the way - still managed to straighten 10 arrow shafts and give them a first coat of danish oil though, so some things are moving forward.

Meanwhile am still trying to get bearpaw to take payment for part 3 of my order - one of their mails says they will cancel my order if I haven't paid them for that bit by the end of the week. I've been begging them to take the rest of the money for a week now.... pleeeease take my money. That's not usually the hard bit of a transaction!

Ah well - still a few days left to sort it out - have phoned them twice but just get a "not available" message. Time to sacrifice a goat perhaps :) Or maybe just a root vegetable as I like furry animals too much.. think I am losing the plot or have inhaled too many danish oil fumes....
 

blakey

Active member
Hi blakey - looking forward to trying but there are more minor bumps in the road lol.

1) One missing arrow shelf pad - irritating but easily remedied
2) Just read the label on the whisper string - it's a 10 strand. Their website explicitly says that 10 strands are for bows above 40lbs; my 30 pounder should be an 8 strand... does it matter that much? - I have no clue but don't want to hurt the bow. So it's to be yet another email.

On the plus side I have the bow in my hands - just can't play yet!
I've never seen an 8 strand string. Not sure if I've ever gone below 12. I reckon you'd have to pack out the serving to hold the nock? But I suppose it doesn't matter too much if you're shooting split finger? A heavy string wil not hurt the bow, just slow it fractionally. I know with flight bows designed to the edge of destruction they use as thin a string as possible, expecting it and the bow to break after two or three shots! I'm sure you'll be fine with 10. This sounds like quite a fast bow. Can't wait to hear how you get on. :)
 

flint666

Member
Blakey is right the ten strand will be fine , the 8 strand wisper string fits the bearpaw nocks fine as thats what they designed it to fit , if your not using it to hunt or shoot flight the difference really is tiny maybe less than 1 fps and as i think has already been said dont shoot plastic vanes of the shelf they tend to kick up as they go over it

enjoy your new bow
 

Dhansak

Member
Thanks blakey and flint666 - you are right - the 10 strand is fine. Actually managed to get through to Bearpaw on the phone today; apparently they ship 10 strands as standard due to most customers preferring how they fit into the nocks of the bow. Hopefully they will sort out their financial confusion too and take the final payment they are due.

But .... finally .... got to shoot the bow today. Wow. I mean wow. And wow again. Just took one of my wife's arrows to shoot in the garage. Thought I'd just do one or two shots to see what it was like. I couldn't stop lol. It's so quick and so quiet -and a joy to shoot. Zero handshock - the arrow just zips away! I haven't smiled so much with a bow in my hand - did a little jig in the garden afterwards :)
(diacritica - will have a photo at the weekend!)

It's an amazing bow - one happy bunny :)


Will keep you posted - waiting for string to settle in so I can set a final bracing height and nocking point etc. If the parts arrive this week, should have my own arrows (some of them anyway) up and running. Will let you know how they fly! - and whether my nocks need packing.

Thanks all for your help and encouragement - cheers!!
 

blakey

Active member
Thanks blakey and flint666 - you are right - the 10 strand is fine. Actually managed to get through to Bearpaw on the phone today; apparently they ship 10 strands as standard due to most customers preferring how they fit into the nocks of the bow. Hopefully they will sort out their financial confusion too and take the final payment they are due.

But .... finally .... got to shoot the bow today. Wow. I mean wow. And wow again. Just took one of my wife's arrows to shoot in the garage. Thought I'd just do one or two shots to see what it was like. I couldn't stop lol. It's so quick and so quiet -and a joy to shoot. Zero handshock - the arrow just zips away! I haven't smiled so much with a bow in my hand - did a little jig in the garden afterwards :)
(diacritica - will have a photo at the weekend!)

It's an amazing bow - one happy bunny :)


Will keep you posted - waiting for string to settle in so I can set a final bracing height and nocking point etc. If the parts arrive this week, should have my own arrows (some of them anyway) up and running. Will let you know how they fly! - and whether my nocks need packing.

Thanks all for your help and encouragement - cheers!!
Sounds great. How did your wife's arrows shoot spine wise? Cheers :)
 

Dhansak

Member
Yay - the remainder of the order finally arrived! - got there in the end :)

I am ready to start actually assembling the arrows when I have built a quick and dirty spine tester. So far I have weighed the shafts and sorted by grain density (quite wide or narrow at the end). Will do a spine test soon I hope so I can group the shafts together by likeness.

FYI - the 24 bearpaw spruce shafts came in ranging from 249-351 grains. Seems like quite a spread? Still there are enough groups clustered together (+/- 8 grains i.e. 16 grain spread) to make a few sets of potential matches. Was going to run with this then realised I don't really know enough about the shafts till I actually spine them. I don't think I will worry about the actual spine too much but just see which shafts bend approximately the same.

Meanwhile the weekend is beginning to look pretty busy so all construction will probably have to wait till next week.

blakey - my wife's arrows seem to be fine! However I have been limited to shooting into the garage at about 7m so I guess it's not a test! Still fun though :) Also I need to figure out my draw on such a short bow. I can do 30lbs on my 68" recurve but struggle a bit with the Slick Stick. I hope it's just a case of working out a new form rather than being over-bowed (gulp).
 

diacritica

Member
Hi Dhansak

Happy to see that you're nearly there with your gear!

When dealing with wooden arrows you can typically fix 3-4 parameters and then have the remaining free. Main parameters are: wood type (spruce, cedar), section (5/16, 11/32), spine and weight.

Companies like bearpaw always consider spine over weight. So if you say "spruce + 5/16 + 35 lbs", then you should expect some weight difference. Equally, if you said "spruce + 5/16 + 350 grains" you should expect some spine difference.

Now, let's do some math to see how much that difference might impact. A 32" shaft weighing 300 grains will weight 270 grains at 29" (which is what I would suggest you cut them down to, more or less). 100 grain points + 10 grains from fletching and nock makes it 380 grains in total. The other arrows would go from 336 grains to 427 grains. The old average was 300 grains, the new average is 380 grains, which makes the relative difference drop significantly. Now, 91 grains between the lightest and the heaviest is still significant but you should be safe using groups of 30 grain difference (less than 10% difference).

Hope that helped. If bearpaw had unlimited resources and time, they would give you your shafts with minor weight differences but that would cost extra. I order my arrows to Falco and I pay a premium price to get them with a difference of just 5 grains! But yeah, I pay EXTRA :)

Pablo

Yay - the remainder of the order finally arrived! - got there in the end :)

I am ready to start actually assembling the arrows when I have built a quick and dirty spine tester. So far I have weighed the shafts and sorted by grain density (quite wide or narrow at the end). Will do a spine test soon I hope so I can group the shafts together by likeness.

FYI - the 24 bearpaw spruce shafts came in ranging from 249-351 grains. Seems like quite a spread? Still there are enough groups clustered together (+/- 8 grains i.e. 16 grain spread) to make a few sets of potential matches. Was going to run with this then realised I don't really know enough about the shafts till I actually spine them. I don't think I will worry about the actual spine too much but just see which shafts bend approximately the same.

Meanwhile the weekend is beginning to look pretty busy so all construction will probably have to wait till next week.

blakey - my wife's arrows seem to be fine! However I have been limited to shooting into the garage at about 7m so I guess it's not a test! Still fun though :) Also I need to figure out my draw on such a short bow. I can do 30lbs on my 68" recurve but struggle a bit with the Slick Stick. I hope it's just a case of working out a new form rather than being over-bowed (gulp).
 

Dhansak

Member
Pablo - thanks for heads up! I simply hadn't thought of that - the reduction in percentile difference with increased weight had completely passed me by :)

You're quite right - I hadn't paid extra to nail down that extra parameter so think I got a pretty good set overall; certainly can't complain - they cost me less than one pound per shaft.

Also in a wild 10 minutes, I built a quick and dirty spine tester. I don't expect it to be accurate in absolute terms but thought it may be fun to see what the shafts did relative to each other! Pretending that the deflection results were good (by eye to the nearest half mm using an old ruler!) I matched them to an AMO chart to translate them to spine weight. Discarding the highest atypical (44) "rogue" single reading, the remaining 23 shafts were all solidly in the 38-41 range with an average of 39. I know this will not be the actual value given my dodgy equipment and shoddy operator error lol, but it's a pretty good grouping - I think they did their spining well!

Also finally managed to shoot 20 yards at the club on Sunday. Did a round with my regular recurve then switched to the Slick Stick to shoot - still with my wife's arrows. The plan was that my wife would finish her round then take a snap of me shooting - I know you need evidence :)

However I only managed to shoot 3 arrows - I lost 2 of 3 of the points in the straw boss :( I bought the arrows ready made from a shop about 18 months ago; they had been shot at foam and 3d targets without issue but never straw bosses before. The I lost another point in my bag target at home this afternoon....

So my next question is an obvious one - what glues the points on best? I need to use the right stuff to put my wife's arrows back together as well as build my own! I gather normal super glue is too brittle. I did come across several recommendations but can't be sure they come from people who shoot at straw glue-ridden bosses. The recommendations include:

Araldite

Super Glue with rubber infused gel (Loctite Ultra Control Gel - 3 g: Amazon.co.uk: Office Products). I bought this already but am now unsure!

BohningFerr-L-Tite (a hot melt cement)


Hmm ... couldn't be more different to each other! I will be using taper non-screw field point on the shafts - and thinking of heating the points first so they contract and sit as flush as possible with the shafts. All suggestions welcome!

Thanks
Rod
 

blakey

Active member
I've always used hot melt, but I have a tin of cold water on hand to dip the point into as soon as it is fixed. :)
 

diacritica

Member
Hi Dhansak

For my wooden arrow points I use epoxi, simple as that. For my other arrows and nocks, fletching, etc, I use bearpaw's glue (https://shop.bearpaw-products.com/WebshopB2C/P-1326?SelectedPage=1)

Glad that you have your own spine tester :) You might enjoy my dirty cresting machine then! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69AwQW35c4I

Still eager to see those pictures, perhaps this weekend? Best of luck!

Pablo

Pablo - thanks for heads up! I simply hadn't thought of that - the reduction in percentile difference with increased weight had completely passed me by :)

You're quite right - I hadn't paid extra to nail down that extra parameter so think I got a pretty good set overall; certainly can't complain - they cost me less than one pound per shaft.

Also in a wild 10 minutes, I built a quick and dirty spine tester. I don't expect it to be accurate in absolute terms but thought it may be fun to see what the shafts did relative to each other! Pretending that the deflection results were good (by eye to the nearest half mm using an old ruler!) I matched them to an AMO chart to translate them to spine weight. Discarding the highest atypical (44) "rogue" single reading, the remaining 23 shafts were all solidly in the 38-41 range with an average of 39. I know this will not be the actual value given my dodgy equipment and shoddy operator error lol, but it's a pretty good grouping - I think they did their spining well!

Also finally managed to shoot 20 yards at the club on Sunday. Did a round with my regular recurve then switched to the Slick Stick to shoot - still with my wife's arrows. The plan was that my wife would finish her round then take a snap of me shooting - I know you need evidence :)

However I only managed to shoot 3 arrows - I lost 2 of 3 of the points in the straw boss :( I bought the arrows ready made from a shop about 18 months ago; they had been shot at foam and 3d targets without issue but never straw bosses before. The I lost another point in my bag target at home this afternoon....

So my next question is an obvious one - what glues the points on best? I need to use the right stuff to put my wife's arrows back together as well as build my own! I gather normal super glue is too brittle. I did come across several recommendations but can't be sure they come from people who shoot at straw glue-ridden bosses. The recommendations include:

Araldite

Super Glue with rubber infused gel (Loctite Ultra Control Gel - 3 g: Amazon.co.uk: Office Products). I bought this already but am now unsure!

BohningFerr-L-Tite (a hot melt cement)


Hmm ... couldn't be more different to each other! I will be using taper non-screw field point on the shafts - and thinking of heating the points first so they contract and sit as flush as possible with the shafts. All suggestions welcome!

Thanks
Rod
 

Dhansak

Member
Thanks guys - will try araldite epoxy first as my wife found some lying around in a drawer. Will investigate hot melt if I can't get that to work. Also it means one less thing to buy - I have been working my post-lady too hard with all of this stuff!

I do like the idea of heating the points to make them sit flush on the shafts - obviously that would be fine with hot melt, but it is it plausible with epoxy?

One final (?) bump in the road .... does this sound familiar lol? At last I went to put on my nocks - opened my bag labelled "11/32 Trad nocks", only to find that the contents were all 5/16". Have mailed Bearpaw just so they know that they may have mislabeled one of their buckets of nocks! Meanwhile will order some more from the Longbow Shop as well as some new points for my wife's arrows.

I think I will refletch a few of my XX75s (1916s) with feather just so I can shoot in the garage for awhile!

By the way Pablo your "quick and dirty" cresting jig looks great - it's a work of art compared to my grungy old plank of wood with 2 cup hooks that I used as a spine tester! I see from your channel that you visited Wye Valley Archery - we are hoping to have our first visit there this summer - looks like fun :)
 

Dhansak

Member
Hi all

A bit of a break in this thread - sorry. things got a bit manic for a period!

Meanwhile in bow-land things have moved on nicely and all is in place. Got 3 sets of arrows out of my 24 shafts and have finally managed to shoot them in the woods! (and got signed off for full NFAS membership in the process - oh, and lost one arrow!).

The Slick Stick is a joy and I am gradually learning how to use it - thank you all so much for your help and support in getting me there :)

Also, as promised ... the proof:








Cheers

Rod

- - - Updated - - -

Hi all

A bit of a break in this thread - sorry. things got a bit manic for a period!

Meanwhile in bow-land things have moved on nicely and all is in place. Got 3 sets of arrows out of my 24 shafts and have finally managed to shoot them in the woods! (and got signed off for full NFAS membership in the process - oh, and lost one arrow!).

The Slick Stick is a joy and I am gradually learning how to use it - thank you all so much for your help and support in getting me there :)

Also, as promised ... the proof:








Cheers

Rod
 

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