3 Reasons You BLEW UP your Crossbow

Hi, I'm Chris with Afflicted Broadheads. Thanks for tuning in. Today, we're gonna talk about two of the biggest reasons that crossbows fail or blow up. And this can be a hot topic because I'm going to cut right to the chase here and I'm gonna say, although there can be manufacturing issues that cause a crossbow to fail, maybe there's a burr on a cam, maybe there was a bad glass pour, maybe someone or a dealer or whoever assembled things wrong or there's something loose. Any of that can always happen, but it is rarer compared to these two major reasons. And the first reason is the wrong knock. So it is imperative that you are shooting the right knock for your crossbow. And there is tons of different knocks. There's flat knocks, there's moons, there's half moons, there's proprietary knocks. They all are different and they all are different for a reason. The knock is designed to engage the string completely when you have that crossbow at full draw and it is ready, getting ready to shoot. So you wanna make sure that you have the right knock. So a lot of times people want to improve the bolt so they go to a custom bolt maker and they get something made specifically for what they are wanting for their crossbow, but they're still not using the right knock. And why is this such an issue? And why is it an issue now when it wasn't an issue before? It seemed like we didn't have these problems just several years ago. Well, the first reason and the biggest reason is that we have decreased the ATA, the axle to axle so tight on some of these crossbows. I mean, they are really narrow. Where before we were looking at these great, big, beautiful, long limbs. And so what that does is if you can imagine when you are cocking a crossbow with long limbs, you come back, you have a nice wide angle at this base. So for your knock to string engagement, there's a lot of room there. You can really get good contact. But the second you shrink that ATA down at the front of your crossbow and you bring that back, what do you got? You got this tight little tiny V there. And so you really need to make sure that you're coming into full contact with that knock. And if you have the wrong knock, you won't even get close. You're just gonna grab a little bit of the edges. And that essentially is a dry fire. The other issue that is plagued by crossbows is that bolt not being fully seated all the way back. This is the biggest thing that I hear over and over again and see over and over again is that it's not fully seated against that. And the reason for that is you can actually have your bolt back. You can have disengaged the dry fire mechanism and still have a just a touch of room between your knock and your string and not have the proper seating. This is imperative. Because what happens is you're essentially causing a type of dry fire. And over time, maybe it's right away, maybe it's later on, you're eventually gonna wear things down where something is going to fail. So it is imperative that when you put your bolt on the rail and you slide it back and you've probably watched the dry fire mechanism disengage, you wanna make sure that you're pulling back on that arrow, that bolt a little bit on the rail to make sure that it is fully seated. You also wanna make sure that you have the right fletching down into the groove the right way too, because otherwise your knock isn't engaging the string at all, but it may still allow your anti-dry fire mechanism to say, oh, there's a bolt in here, we're okay to go. But you have not had the proper contact with your string. That is also something that happens. So you need to be very careful of how you are loading your bolt, how it is coming back, and making sure that it's fully seated. Now, you're gonna wanna check this, especially if you are, say you are walking a long way to where you're going to hunt, and so you've already, you're walking through the woods, you've already cocked your crossbow, it's already loaded. As you walk, things can happen. So you wanna make sure that before you shoot, once you get into your stand, your blind, whatever, that you've double checked, get your finger on that bolt, give it a push back, make sure that it is completely seated every single time. And one other thing that I do wanna include in this that can actually cause a problem and people don't really think about it is making sure that your rail is lubed. So if you have a crossbow that's using a full rail as a guide for your bolt, you wanna make sure that it is properly lubed. Otherwise, what happens is that string goes down the rail, it causes chatter. So instead of having this nice, smooth release when you pull the trigger, that string is actually chattering its way down there. So it can cause issues as well and definitely will cause a lot more wear and tear on your crossbow. So when you think about issues and if you're worried about crossbows failing because they are blowing up, hate to say it, but most of the time it is user error. And so you wanna make sure that you're using a right knock and that your bolt is fully seated every time.