THE Bow Design For Faster Bows

this is how my brain feels I'm going to decode the complexities of today's topic so your brain can understand rather than explode which begs the question what makes a bow shoot an arrow fast it's a pretty complicated question with a lot of contradictory opinions and I completely understand why I'm on my own journey to find out what makes a bow shoot an arrow fast and it's not one factor it's many the reason this top IC is extremely interesting to me is because I make bows and if I can kind of predict how fast a bow will go based on the design before I make it then I can make better bows I've spent most of the last 10 years figuring out how to make Bow Shoot smooth and that's kind of what I've specialized in now switching my brain to speed is changing everything but speed and smoothness are less contradictory than I originally thought which is getting me very excited to find out what makes it fast so that I can make smooth and fast bows now to help illustrate some of this complexity I want to share a story that you might have heard before the tortoise and the hair take these two creatures one of them is super fast one of them is super slow and they're going out for a race the fast when the hair is destined to win the race because he's super fast much faster than the tortoise and as a matter of fact he takes off and gets a significant lead but after a little bit of time he gets bored and a little tired and is just going to sit down for a little rest while the tortoise plunges along nice and slow and continues to go and by the time the hair wakes up from his rest the tortoise has crossed the Finish Line the obvious thing is that the hair would win but the truth is the tortoise did the obvious thing may be more than it seems It's not what it's cracked up to be it promises more than it delivers all hat no cattle a let down in Disguise more bark than bite the obvious thing is that by increasing the poundage on a bow it'll shoot faster but the tortoise says but if you increase too much mass that may not be the case you know the main thing that you have to deal with is mass I mean that's the first hurdle there's several hurdles you want to get into you want to make sure the limb is made with the least amount of mass possible so that it'll move quickly meet Trace Lickton he's been teaching mounted archery for 20 years and he's also been stud the topic we're talking about today he was generous enough to help me teach this video and as a matter of fact he sent me 15 minutes of gold that I've posted over on the shadow proof archery page so go watch this whole video because I'm taking and testing some of his ideas thank you Trey for helping me here I hope we get to do more together in the future so the actual true statement is a heavier draw bow makes for a faster bow if the energy gained is greater than the energy lost by changing the design or adding math to the bow limbs and that's just one of the maybe 25 30 factors that go into this equation that's why it's complicated so my goal is that if you leave this video knowing a few more things and not feeling confused then I win so we're going to do some amazing tests with 10 different bows to try to prove some theories that I have about bow speeds Theory one in the traditional boer's Bible Volume One Tim Baker says the only way to put more energy into a bow with the consistent draw weight and draw length is and I quote is to design it to have a harder pull in the early and mid-stages of draw his theory is that by having a heavier draw early on it's going to store more energy and make the arrows go faster the next Theory we'll test is that the limbs work a shorter distance on faster Bows framer's video he was talking about how the shorter bow tends to be faster with the shorter working part of the limb and yes that is so much true because it's storing so much energy and it just really wants to snap back but there's also a counter to that so if you see this shorter bow which is it's storing a lot of energy but the limb tip is moving almost twice the distance as the limb tip on the longer bow what ends up happening is is that this bow from Full draw to brace has only has to go half the distance so in many times that longer bow is actually faster this concept kind of hurt my brain because it seems like if the bow is bending more then it's going to store more energy and shoot faster right but then if you explain it the other way around where if the bowm travels a shorter distance but the String's traveling the same distance from your full draw then that shorter distance will travel quicker making the string go faster making the arrow go faster and then when I thought of it kind of that way it kind of made sense sense the third Theory we're testing today is that the limbs have an optimal position relative to the bow handle when unstrung for example this bow right here the limb tips are 8 in in front of the handle whereas this one is 2 and 1/2 in in front of the handle what's the optimal range of an unstrung Bow's limb tips relative to the handle for the fastest bow we're going to test those three theories here's how I'm going to proceed with the testing first I'll find the distance of an unstrung bow to the center of the Riser next is finding out the distance that the limb travels from brace height to full draw I'm using tape and I'm precisely marking the exact corner right where the tip of the tip overlay is next I'll draw the bow to full draw get all the way down to that 28 right there and I'll do the same thing with the corner of this other piece of tape knowing the exact inside Corners are the measurement makes this a whole lot more precise and we get 7 and 1336 so I can get down to at least the 16th of an inch preciseness next we'll gather draw weight at 10 in 15 in 20 in 24 in and then finally 28 in draw length is normally measured from the back of the Riser so I adjusted the measurement on the tillering tree per riser size to keep accuracy consistent between each bow now I'll take this bow and shoot it through the chronograph I'll use the same arrow for every single bow to to promote consistency and I will also average out the speeds and take multiple shots per bow to get it as accurate as we can then we'll take the total draw weight and divide it by the arrow speed to see how many feet per second on average we're getting per pound of draw weight this should give us a general idea around a bunch of different bows now I'm just going to continue doing this for 10 to 15 bows of as many different designs as I can gather from around the shop so it's time for me to get to work hopefully we can find some patterns to answer the question when it comes to Bow design what factors affect bow speed the most what should we be paying attention to to predict how fast a bow will shoot so here's what I learned the first question is does early heavy draw lead to a faster bow the answer is most of the time it appears that if the early heavy draw is Extreme you need static limb tips for the bow to be fast if they're bending it wasn't so fast it also appears that the heavier early draw does not actually translate to a faster bow with these 10 bows I've been really wanting to prove this idea true I haven't been able to yet when I made this bow four or five videos ago I made it to be fast based on the early draw idea the early heavy draw idea then I realized it wasn't fast so I wanted to do a follow-up video on speed to say why wasn't this fast trying to figure this concept out and now that I got information on these bows and actually graph the data this bow hit 70% of its full draw at 20 in this design by far had the heaviest early draw but it's it's not that fast this Bow's kind of in the middle range at 20 in of draw you hit 63% of this Bow's total draw weight and that tends to be the sweet spot because the bows that were in between 58% of its total draw weight and 63% of its total draw weight at 20-in draw was the fastest it's almost like there was The Sweet Spot of early draw that is fastest seems like if there's too much reflex it can slow it down a little bit but if there's not enough reflex it can slow it down as well there's this kind of a sweet spot in the middle with a lot of these tests the second thing we tested is that the bow is faster when the limbs move a shorter distance from BRAC site to full draw is this true it's absolutely true if you could keep the mass the same the problem is you have to add so much material that it gets heavier and that can counteract the speed gained here's the idea wrapped up in a nut Shell B lims that traveled from brace height to full draw 7 and 1/2 to 8 in of movement were the fastest again the ones that traveled less than that were twoo long of bows and had so much mass and were like a full Hickory bow or the other long bow I used had a maple inlay which is slower than bamboo and so much mass in those that they weren't faster but the ones in the middle range of 7 and 1/2 to 8 in of movement in the limbs were much faster than the ones that were above 8 in and the only two below 8 in were the 68 and 72 in long bow that has a lot of limb tip weight and our completely straight long bows so the third thing we're asking is there an optimal amount of back set we need for a faster bow and the answer is yes but it's based on bow design so I think we could separate static limb tips from working limb tips and the answer to that question will be different for these different categories but let's say for the normal recurve or Longbow where the tips are bending at least a little bit there is an optimal am of back set based on my testing 1 and 1/2 to 2 and 1/2 in of back set proved to be the most efficient and fastest bows for whatever reason when we get really far into back set we're not getting as much efficiency you got to be careful how far forward and the handle you get uh otherwise you lose your stability and the wheels fall off the bus in general the longer the bow the less the limbs travel forward but with the specific bow I tested the 68 and 72 in Long bows they had too much mass which didn't make them faster I think if I did a really long bow style design but use some sort of really light efficient material maybe the speed would increase but the mass was too much and didn't actually make the bow faster that's where Trey's talking about these hyle bows and he has some bows that are used with lighter materials like carbon fiber with the non-bending tips and that actually produces a faster bow because there's not so much mass there I'm going to have to test that on a bow I make soon I also think this optimal amount of back set could change based on the length of the bow because the same bows that had 1 to 2 and 1/2 in of reflex from the center of the handle are also the same bows that hit somewhere around 60% of its draw weight at 20 in in both of those scenarios they were faster 10 bows might seem like a lot to test but I really feel like I need 10 10 recurve bows with slightly different variability and maybe 10 long bows and maybe a 100 bows or a thousand bows to actually get super accurate results also remember bow speed is a fun hobby but not the most important thing for most types of archery but in order for me to prove some of my theories I'm going to make some bows that are super fast or I'll make a bow like this that I think's super fast and it's not and then I get to learn I also think it's worth noting that my goal is to help more people enjoy more archery and all of this talk and conversation means nothing except kind of some fun to do these things but it means nothing if if you're not getting out and just shooting your bow and having a good time with some friends or by yourself relaxing there's something special there's almost something spiritual about archery in a sense and it is so so fun so if you haven't done that get Outdoors get to a range shoot your bow have a lot of fun and know that that is a whole lot more important than all of these technicalities and you don't even have to worry about these technicalities I'll worry about them and I'm going to learn this I'm going to figure it out for you I have learned so much when it comes to what makes a bow fast and realized a lot of the complexities and the thing that it makes me want to do is make some more bows so buckle your seat bels because you know what I'm doing next