Archery…

Last but one n00b night of the year, 11 down, one to go! HURRAH!

While inhaling fumes, from both the glue and the isopropyl alcohol used for cleaning/degreasing I had a chat with one of the bods with regards to my issues with tuning.

The way I see it with my arrows being too stiff I essentially have two options – whilst retaining the same shafts. I can increase the poundage on my fingers or I can increase the pile weight. As I have only recently increased the bow weight from 30-32# to 36-37# I don’t want to increase it again for the time being. My arrows currently have 100gr ACE piles installed, I could increase this to 120gr to see if any difference is made.

And guess what..because all my arrow repair stuff is at the club, so is my mini blowtorch and hotmelt glue…my arrows are here…I thought to myself “the last thing I must do is forget to take them” and sure enough, the last thing I did was forget to take them.

After I’d finished the stack of club arrows that needed ‘maintenance’, I at last got round to using my jigs to refletch the 660 Navs that I had returned to me the other week. On went some neon green and white shield cut vanes (I like shield cut – I have no evidence they are better or worse..I just like them).

The idea being that I will try these as an alternative (29.5″ Nav 660′s with 80gr piles) as an alternative to the current ones (29″ Nav 610′s with 100gr piles)to see if they are closer to a match. The only drawback is that if they are, I only own 4. Which aren’t enough. But another 4 will be cheaper than a full set. There is a slight problem of course in that Navigators are no longer available. They have been replaced by ACGs, I need to find out if ACGs are simply rebranded Navs or if they have been redesigned from the ground up. I will find out later…someone on AIUK is bound to know.

If these prove to be a better match I will need to decide what to do next…I can’t afford a full set, I don’t really want to up the weight on my fingers just yet and I’m unsure about increasing the pile weight.

Any suggestions dear readers?

Last night saw the start of the final n00b course of the year…four weeks of repairing arrows ahead. When I arrived there were three sets of arrows that were incomplete, with either missing or damaged fletches, damaged nocks, missing piles or bent. By the end of the night I had repaired 11 sets. So much for having the time to refletch three of my own arrows.

Still it keeps me off the streets.

Yesterday I received back a set of four arrows that I had lent someone to try. I bought them as a trial, wasn’t sure, lent them to a friend, that was three or four years ago. I will need to refletch them as they have a quite unpleasant tiger stripe pattern on the fletches. I will replace them with a quite unpleasant cowspot pattern instead.

In other news, as of this weekend the field will be available on Saturdays from 10am rather than 2pm for the duration of the school holidays. Which is a bonus, it means I may be able to comfortably get one of the longer rounds in.

TTFN

OW! it hurt…

Much of this afternoon was spent at the club. We held a ‘have a go’ session, 2 1/2 hours of shooting, with a cuppa and cakes thrown in, £10..what a bargain.

While others coached the have-a-goers, I settled down to fixing the 30 or so bent, defletched, broken-nocked and de-piled arrows we have because of the n00b courses. That took me all of about an hour.

I was then largely a spare part, but still got a cup of tea out of it

Once the tea break was over, I dropped a text to a mate who had agreed to meet up after the session to throw some arrows towards a boss. To be honest I wasn’t expecting him to come as he’d been up at daft o’clock to drive someone to catch a ferry. He replied confirming he was still intending to come over.

Between the time everyone left and he arrived I sat on a bench in the sun with my bottle of wa-wa and a copy of the Quicks catalogue. I quickly gave this up as a bad idea because I found myself thinking…”oooh that might be useful”. So I turned to repairing an arrow that had been defletched after I’d packed up my gear.

Having installed the first replacement fletch I wander outside to sit down again, to see my companion arrive.

As he has been out of it for a while, I was happy to shoot whatever he was comfortable with so let him decide the distance. He settled of 50yds and as one boss had been left out for us, I simply measured backwards from it to find the shooting line. The bow was set up, dragged back to the shooting line and we then commenced. It was then that I started feeling the effects of hunching over a fletching jig.

Long story short, we shot one detail, six arrows at a time, in my case with mixed results. As we were shooting into one of the n00b bosses – older, softer centres to make allowance for the lower poundage bows, if we didn’t hear the distinctive plop(ish), we could assme we’d got a gold or missed the boss entirely. Fortunately I didn’t miss, but once came quite close to doing so.

When we got to 5 dozen we both started tiring, this in turn was evidenced in the results we were getting. While I hadn’t shot very well, I was starting to see my arrows wandering a little.

One more dozen saw the end of shooting for the evening, six dozen in little over an hour is quite hard work. I don’t regret shooting, I do regret the pace.

That won’t stop me going back tomorrow morning though.