Pinwheel 12

Mahly13-

Wow, you must just runaround with a clover in your shoe or something huh?[&:]

Guess what! I used to shoot aluminums. 1916 X-7 blue, (long before the cobalt was re-intrroduced) and I shot them pretty well! Won a few State Championships, and even a World Title with those big old " honking heavy" things!

Switched to ACC' s. Amazingly, they flew just as good once tuned![] Won a few more...

Dropped off from competitive shooting for awhile, other than a few local 3D' s in the summer. Been four or five years now since I really did anything " big" . Next year I' m back at it however as I' m really missing it....

Built some Litespeed 500' s a couple months ago, threw a 3-60 uni and " G" nocks in the rear, and some 1.8 3D Durvanes, (blue of course) fletched right helical, and threw a 100grain CB point up front. Got my new Max 3000 Omega cam bow, tuned it and the arrows, and guess what?! My scores have jumped up almost 10-12 points per game this year! 12, 11, and X counts are significantly higher also! How can this be??[] I also easily qualified for the IBO Worlds, even tho I don' t shoot but once in a blue moon nowadays! Yep, carbon arrows sure do suck.....imagine that, I must be a true " wizard of tuning" or have extremely good luck also! LOL.[&:]

Art-

Sorry, I missed one of your posts way back, yes I agree with you---initially aluminum is straighter, no arguement. but they don' t STAY straight. If you have a straightener and like to diddle yes, you can keep them fairly consistent, but the problem is that the repeated bending and re-bending of them flexing and then being re-straightened on the straightener weakens the material and spine much quicker than carbon as carbon has much greater memory. You' ve been into the engineering field, so must know the flex tolerances of aluminum vs that of biased wrapped carbon fibers. Cyclic stress rates for aluminum are far below carbon.

I loved my old 1916 blues... another interesting point is that I used to shoot them at 70+ lbs! and I COULD. nowadays one cannot get a 1916 to spine out to anything over 52-55lbs, if they' re extremly lucky maybe 60. Hmmmm. Something fishy here also. Take a 1916 (or any aluminum for that matter) and find an older one of the same spine gradation. Give them a simple flex test---the older ones were much stronger. And it isn' t due to aging, they were rugged enough to shoot perfectly out of my High Country Supreme at 27" arrow (29" DL) and I think 72lbs when new. I really need to dig up some old charts to see what they were rated for back then, but I know it was much more than what we see today. More fuel to add to this fire, hehe Good shooting, Pinwheel 12

PABowhntr

I think alot of folks are bringing up a good point and it can apply to more pieces of equipment than just arrows. We all have a specific level of shooting ability at any given time in our lives. Sometimes our shooting ability is not up to the level of the equipment we use and in some cases it could be just the opposite.

Many times, when discussing various equipment/technical issues on the forums, I find myself asking " how much of a practical difference will ' x' make even though I know it is technologically or structurally superior?" . Is my shooting ability capable of demonstrating a quantitative or qualitative difference between the two pieces of equipment in question? etc... I definitely think that in the case of ICS carbons this statement applies.

I have no doubt that what Len, Jeff, Arthur, etc.. are saying is true. The tolerances, whether it be spine, straightness or weight, that some of the ICS carbons are being held at is probably pretty poor. However, from a practical standpoint, how much is this going to affect the accuracy level of the average archer?

The same type of case could be made regarding machined versus cast risers. From a practical perspective and for the average archer how much of a difference is there in the tolerances that each style of riser is held to? Is one stronger than the other? Will one promote better accuracy than the other? Does one weigh less than the other? etc.... These are mostly all practical characteristics that can be measured by " Joe Bowhunter" and are thus important to him.

Can the same be said of an arrow with a straightness tolerance of .0015 compared to one that might be listed as .003 but is actually .006?

I think that when the time comes that you can physically prove this to the average guy then it will become more important to the manufacturers. Until then......

Good topic of discussion though. This reminds me of that components thread from awhile back.

JeffB

Hey Folks,

Please let me make a few things clear.

I was in no way implying that someone who shoots softball sized groups at 30 yards shouldn’t be hunting. I said that scenario was not a good indicator of shaft quality. However, I know that for myself and many other archers, the excitement of the hunt, added clothing and the rigors of the field tend to double the size of one’s groups. Now that softball is getting closer to a Kickball. I personally am not happy with that. That’s my own standard however, and I don’t hold anyone else to it.

I’m especially not happy if my equipment is limiting my accuracy in that way. Ask Rangeball about his experience w/ going from low-end carbons to A/C/Cs. He thought the problem was his own limitations w/ the mediocre groups he was getting out of his low-end carbons.

If I’m capable of shooting X” groups all day long at Y yardage and my arrows won’t allow me to do so, I’m doing myself, and the game I hunt a disservice.

And Yes, you can kill deer all day long w/ a low-end carbon arrow. Never said you couldn’t. What I am saying is that people are not getting what they pay for in cheap carbon shafts. The manufacturers are advertising X, Y, & Z but you are getting A, B, & C. You do get what you pay for w/ alum, A/C, and high end Carbons (for the most part). And until most archers/Bowhunters up their own game, the manufacturers are going to keep pushing the crap out there to sell. Once a carbon arrow is made..it’s made…they can’t do anything else with it. So they sell it, otherwise they go out of business from separating the wheat from the chaff.

And Black Frog, Yes! Spine consistency is KEY, and is the most CRUCIAL part of the problem here..not the straightness. If spine and weights are very consistent, then a moderate straightness (.008-.010 TIR or so) is not such big deal for most archery applications (except in Arthur’s case who is hurt even then because he requires such long arrows). But the cheap carbons not only lack decent straightness and weight tolerances, but they are all over the place for spine. You can have the straightest arrow in the world, but if it’s spined different it won’t group with the rest of the arrows in your quiver that are spined alike. W/ cheap carbons you are often buying what amounts to two or three different sizes of aluminum arrows in one dozen, though this is getting better every year.

Black Frog

JeffB- Yup, I agree. That' s why I' d like to see manufacturers delivering some SPINE TOLERANCES within a dozen. Sure it' s nice to have straightness and weight tolerances, but if the spine is all over the place across a batch- the .001" straightness won' t be helping that much.

Rangeball

But I wonder how many of those archers have accepted their level of shooting because/due to inferior arrows? What if with better arrows that baseball becomes a golfball? How many of them are really good shots masked by bad arrows?

Up until last fall I shot GT 5500 hunters. Advertised straightness of .006, I believe. When I finally got around to weighing them (something I wouldn' t have thought to do without some of you guys), they were all over the place. I never checked for straightness, and the 1/2 dozen all grouped within 4" out to 30 yards, good enough for hunting.

Simply listening to Jeff and buying ACCs shrunk my group in half overnight. That' s a HUGE drop and gives me much more margin for error when the shakes hit at the moment of truth...

silentassassin

Which particular shafts do you all consider " high end" ICS carbons and which do you consider " low end" carbons? Gold Tip XTs were the first and only carbons that I have shot extensively. So, I would be intereseted in everyones opinion. I actually shot A/C/Cs for several years before switching to Gold Tips, however A/C/Cs are cost prohibitive for me anymore.

Arthur P

All very true, Pinwheel. But at least aluminum gives me the option to diddle. With carbon and it' s much greater memory, you get what you get and there' s nothing you can do about it. Still might need to try using a heat gun on the things and see if my straightener will do any good with them. That goes a couple of steps beyond diddling though.

I can buy a couple of dozen aluminum arrows each year for about the same money I' d have to spend on comparable carbons, but with fewer headaches, better yield, and better consistency. Not to mention the fact that if I go from Texas to Maine, or Maine to Oregon, Oregon to Alaska, I can buy the same aluminum arrows in all those places that I can buy right here at home and they' ll be identical. If I shoot something like Easton Epics and go anywhere else and need arrows, I might not find anything but Nitro. Or GoldTip. Or Carbon Express... Too many different manufacturers, too many regional favorites, or even favorites from one shop to the next. Not at all identical, and probably will shoot and tune very differently from one brand to the next.

PABowhntr

That I definitely agree with. It would alot simpler if we had just one or two major carbon manufacturers as we do with aluminum. One of the reasons I switched from one brand of ICS carbon to another was because none of the local shops continued to carry what I was using at the time.

Straightarrow

Since Jeff brought up the importance of spine, could someone tell me the proper way to determine spine?

ijimmy

Spine consistency is KEY, and is the most CRUCIAL part of the problem here..not the straightness. If spine and weights are very consistent, then a moderate straightness (.008-.010 TIR or so) is not such big deal for most archery applications

AMEN to that and the fact that alot of archers are underspined due to the fact that they want to shoot 280 fps or faster , does not help them especialy this time of year when they start screwing on broadheads .