The SECRET To Fast Bows "For Beginners"

when two bows have the same draw we why does one of them shoot arrows faster than the other Arrow speed is all about energy and the Bow's primary job is to send the arrow down range the bow is a tool to project the arrow towards the designated Target the bow is a tool and tools come in many different shapes sh and sizes you could have a hammer or a wrench I know not a wrench just stick with me the tool you choose depends on what you want to use it for do you want to hit things or do you want to grab them grab a hammer when you want to smash things and grab a wrench if you want to twist things the tool in our case is a bow but you have to decide do you prefer to smash things or do you need some leverage to twist them now instead of Smashing and twisting our bow can be made for speed or smoothness or some where in between the Bow's job is to store energy and transfer it to the arrow to project It Forward the more energy transferred to the arrow the faster the errow will go today we're talking about the bow as a tool for Speed so where does this energy come from and what makes a bow shoot an arrow fast there are three major things about a bow that affect the Arrow's speed I'm going to show you how to diagnose these three things so that you can shoot a bow that's perfect for your needs I do not think speed is the most important thing when it comes to a bow but I do think it matters a lot no one is talking about Aeros speed in the way that we're going to talk about it today and personally as a bower I pushed the limits on a bow build making a wild design and the results I found really surprised me and I can't wait to share that with you but first let's start with the obvious one draw weight draw weight or bow poundage refers to how much effort it takes to pull a string all the way back to where you shoot it most the time this is measured at a 28 in draw length draw weight will affect Arrow speed the higher the draw weight generally the faster the bow will go if the design is the same that's the idea at least so let's test it here I have two identical bows that have the exact same design the exact same bow but one is 40 lb of draw weight the other one is 45 lb let's see how the speed differs between these two and if the heavier poundage one really is much faster I took a bunch of shots to the chronograph and averaged the speeds the lb bow averaged 172.2 ft per second while the 45lb bow averaged 186.65 lbs of draw weight and to double check I use this jig with this crane scale to make sure that the poundages were correct and the difference in the poundages of the Two bows are 4.8 lb so basically 5 lb equals 12 ft per second increase when you're around the 40 lb Mark so it's pretty straightforward the heavier poundage bow you have the faster the arrow will go but the next one's often overlooked the second thing that is affecting how fast the arrows going is the draw length of the Archer just imagine we have two bows one of them draws a 40 lb draw weight at a 30 in draw length and another one draws a 40 lb draw weight at a 26 in draw length both these bows have the same design same arrows same bow strings everything's the same except the poundage is the exact same at different draw lengths if you shoot the bow at 26 in that arrow is going to go a lot slower than the bow at 30 in even though the poundage is the same the longer draw length will make the arrow go faster so your quick question may be if I change my braze height will that change my arrow speed and the answer is yes I've actually tested this on the shatterproof archery YouTube channel in the to the point series we tested a bunch of different brace Heights with a bunch of different bows and found that the lower the brace height is the faster the arrow goes even though the lower the brace height is the bow poundage drops I know kind of counterintuitive but based on all of our testing it's actually true I'm not some genius and know exactly why this happens I've just tested it and I'm telling you my results in the comments there'll probably be some people who actually know what's going on but what I do know is that the further the string travels the faster the air will go even when there's equal draw weight you may be thinking Kramer this is good to know but that doesn't change anything I have the body I have I can't make my arms longer true but based on the bow design your draw length can increase huh let me explain the third major thing that affects the speed of the arrow is bow design and this is probably the most major the first thing to pay attention to on bow design is handle position relative to the bow limbs the further forward the handle is relative to the limbs the slower the bow will go the further towards the Archer the handle is relative to the limbs faster the arrow will go just think about it this block of wood is 2 in thick let's say I just taped it right there on the handle and I shaped it a little bit and now I grabbed the block of wood and shot the bow well I just increased my draw length by 2 in the bow design changes the draw length it doesn't change your draw length but it can change how much the limbs are bending based on the handle position what if I put this 2-in block right here and then mounted the limbs on this side of it now I just moved the limbs so far forward and the handle so far back towards me that my draw length is further but I could do that in the other direction I could have mounted these limbs on this side and now I just reduce the length of the draw length by an inch why does one matter more than the other well the further the draw length on often the faster the arrow almost all the time but the arrow will go slower if you do it in the other direction the big benefit to the other direction the the bow design where the handle is further forward the big big benefit to that is the hold it right there on bow design because here's a brief intermission to show you how you can change your bow speed right now Beaver string silencers will slow your bow Speed 3 to 7 feet per second again something we've tested on the shatterproof Archer YouTube channel you can change your bow speed based on the type of bow string you get fast flight being the fastest d97 or dynema being in the middle and b55 or a type of polyester being the slowest from the slowest to fastest can be 10 to 15 ft per second difference also tested you know where the width of a bow limb will make your bow faster or slower wider limbs generally slower than thinner limbs I guess you can't adjust that on your bow right now but what you can adjust is the arrow Arrow weight is very very significant when it comes to Bow speeds for example with a 40 lb bow this Arrow can be shooting 190 ft per second where this one is only shooting 1176 ft per second why cuz this one has an extremely heavy tip and is a much heavier Arrow the heavier the arrow is the slower the bow will shoot the arrow now the faster speed doesn't equal more penetration and if you're a you know this and know all about that topic probably but if the goal is being best at target practice the lighter arrow is going to give you a flatter trajectory which will probably help you become more accurate the big big benefit to that is the bows get significantly smoother once you have the handle further back relative to the limbs the bow gets significantly more shaky and a lot more vibration when you shoot it that's why we don't only Chase speed the second thing to look at is limb shape I built two pairs of Limbs for this bow you can see this one comes flat off the handle and then recurves check out this one it comes way down off the handle and then recurves which limb is going to store more energy the one that's reflexed a whole lot more limb shape is going to change how much energy is stored in the bow which will change how fast the bow goes general rule recurves are going to be faster than reflex deflex bows reflex deflex bows generally have a little bit more speed than long bows next the length of a bow is going to change the speed of the bow even more precisely the amount of the limb that is working horse bows are generally really fast because the seas are non-bending so only this section A good 12 in is bending making all of the energy be stored in one location or one section of the limb this causes the bow to be faster the working limb on this long bow is about 23 3 24 in that's a pretty long working limb for most people's draw length so this bow is going to go a little slower I'm using a lot of generalizations cuz every bow is unique and different but the idea here is that a shorter bow with the same draw weight will shoot faster than a longer bow with the same draw weight if the design is the same next is the material specifically talking about the limbs fiberglass is more durable than wood and not only more durable it's going to shoot faster than wood but maybe carbon fiber is actually even faster than fiberglass the type of material the Bow's made out of will change how fast it is so why don't we design bows Just For Speed well they become less fun to shoot and as a bow maker you run into this really unique problem really weird check this out hey quick question for you do you think this bow design would shoot a faster Arrow or would this bow design shoot a faster Arrow now the only difference in these two is the Riser the limbs are actually the exact same shape this is a bow I built this year let's swap the limbs so you can see what happens when you push the limits this is the bow without a string on it we've got two things going on the limb shape and the handle shape you can build the handle where the limbs come off of the handle in different directions where this handle is coming off flat and the limb shape is ridiculously well ridiculous to get a string on this I've never done it by myself I've always had help so far because it is so difficult I've tried to Bo Stringer I've tried all sorts of methods let's see if I can cuz of the curve it actually might be best to leverage it on my [Music] leg perfectly tillered huh have you ever seen a bow like this so what's actually going on well I'm not completely positive but because the limbs go back so far the bow wants to return to the state at rest which is trying to pull backwards so much that that force of pulling backwards is stronger you can see this limb doesn't Bend quite as much so it's pulling back is stronger than the other limb I haven't finished this bow so let's adjust these Limbs and see if we can make this bow work and see how fast this ridiculous shape of limb can actually [Music] shoot [Music] you can see that with the fixed tiller we're already looking a lot lot better but the fear is that when you shoot the bow there's so much force going forward that these limbs inverse and it almost snaps out of your hand and I've actually had this happen to me on a bow I've done before and these are the exact signs where I'm very close to Towing that line so by making the string shorter and increasing the brace height hopefully we can avoid that and shoot this bow and show you how this design creates a fast fast bow I still have too much of a positive tiller this isn't a bow building video so I'm just going to fix this and do maybe like a 5-second montage real quick and then I'll show you about the [Music] speed okay so we got a 50 lb bow just warming up the limbs making sure they don't inverse on me it's time for the speed test 98 200 so 200 ft per second not as fast as I thought it would go for a 50 lb bow well now I'm confused and I don't know what to do because my intention was to come in and say see that's the bow designed to make the fastest bow but I have another idea that I think would be faster than this after shooting this and seeing that it's only 200 ft per second I'm like why is it only 200 ft per second am I losing efficiency in speed because it's coming off the Riser flat and maybe if I made it come off the Riser facing the Archer a little bit more it would not lose so much of that energy and speed well we're going to have to find that out in another video I know I know I know I know I couldn't leave you I couldn't leave you like that so I just spent half an entire day building this Riser this is the one we were using originally flat off the handle you can see this one angles back towards the archer in doing so I put the exact same limbs on this Riser that were on this Riser now these limbs are 35 lb limbs with a different Riser shape where they were 50 with with this my question is how fast will this bow go with the different shape so we were at 200 ft per second and if we're dropping 15 lb and we take 12 ft per second off per 5 lb of draw weight what are we looking at 1224 36 164 if we're above 164 that'll be interesting all right shot number one 173 at this point I realized we were on to something and I wondered how heavy of a bow would I need with this designed to hit 200 ft per second I potentially am getting in over my head here but I think energy stored is not the same as energy used the stored energy in the bow is only useful if it can transfer that to the arrow so with a riser where the limbs come flat off with this crazy design it's storing a lot of energy but I don't think it can use all of it the limbs have to bend about 50% just to get to braze height and then another 50% to get to full draw so when you release the arrow it's only using 50% I'm using rough numbers of course it's only using 50% of the stored energy in the bow next take this Riser I just built with that same crazy limb shape now it doesn't take near as much power to get this to brace height which means when you release the arrow the bow is using more of its total energy stored towards sending the arrow down range I nearly completely ended this video but then I built another Riser but because of the change of the angle on the Riser the poundage dropped from 50 to 35 lbs with this so I wanted to build some more limbs that shot 200 ft per second with this Riser design so we're talking 43 lb same limb shape different handle angle will this 43 lb bow be close to our 50 let's find out okay same Arrow same bow string just a different bow handle [Music] so with the 43lb bow we're getting a Max rating of 210 ft per second with an average around 206 ft per second and just a little bit earlier with a different handle design but the same limb shape we were getting 200 ft per second Max Speed with a 50 lb bow as far as speed goes there's probably an optimal handle shape matching a limb Design This doesn't mean that that flat handle bad it just means with this limb shape it's not optimal for Speed because of the amount of reflex in these limbs a flatter limb may be quite a bit faster on the flat handle design than this handle design my intention is to show you that different designs will lead to different speeds I'm not trying to confuse but you just think of how many angles and variations you can get with bows and this is what excites me about bow making right now is that I'm in the middle of testing all of these out I am learning just so much right now and I hope if I make this video in a year I'll be able to give you some better absolutes of things to look for I just want to be careful not to say this is exactly 100% all the time the way when I personally haven't tested enough different designs to see what's faster by taking to look at this design and this design I definitely would have thought that this one is faster because of more reflex than this one that's not the case to bring this all the way around bow design changes a speed you could purchase a bow that's 50 lbs but be getting the same efficiency from the bow as someone else with a 35lb bow just because the design is different so as the takeaway know your goal when it comes to a bow is your goal fast is it smoothness if you want to keep the smoothness but just increase the speed maybe bow design isn't the main thing maybe you need to increase your strength to get a faster bow and for the fastest possible bow maybe you need to be okay with shooting a that has a little bit more hand shock thank you for joining me today stay shatterproof my friends I will see you on the next video