$100 worth of arrows dead in one day - Bad Carbon ?

was.deevey

I've been shooting at a range for the past few months and was invited out to a bit of a Fun Shoot, random distances through various obstacles e.g. shooting though tires, trees etc ..

Bloody great day out but resulted in losing all but one of my arrows, Beman hunter 340's

Some had the point squished right down the shaft which left split carbon shards about 3 inches into the shaft - so unsafe/unusable anymore (TBH cinderblocks were hit in these instances) ..

However 4 of them literally clean snapped in half after ricochet shots, different targets, different heights, and hit different material on ricochet.

Does this seem normal ? No-one else there had seen the likes of it before with carbon (or any other material) - all pretty clean breaks at around the halfway mark.

Bad batch perhaps ?

Bow is a One-Piece 32lb appx Yamaha Recurve, shooting off the shelf btw.

greysides

You did yourself a favour. Those arrows are completely unsuitable for your purposes. Taking a 30" arrow you'd need to have about 60# on your fingers for them to fly properly. With a 33" arrow you'd need to be holding about 44#.

Feathers/vanes can only help so much. Part of the reason you damaged so many might have been that they were flying sideways. Those are hunting arrows which are usually fairly tough.

If you measure how much weight you are holding on your fingers (measure your draw length and then pull the bow that far attached to a scales) then with your draw length you should be able to estimate what spine of arrow you need from here.

However just looking at that chart............ all those spines seem very stiff. You might be better off with some Easton Jazz arrows, they are available in a good variety of spines, cheap, easy to cut and won't explode in your face on release if you try to shoot a damaged arrow you haven't checked out.

was.deevey

Sorry they were 400's not 340's, but you are right they were certainly way too stiff for my draw length (29) TBH I knew they were a bit stiff, wasn't sure by quite how much.

Wont be crying over them as they came with the bow for nothing anyhow - Just the actual way they split in two seemed very "peculiar" to everyone (including an Olympic instructor that was there).

They were all flying straight as an Arrow (pun intended) seemed to be breaking on impact other objects when the target was missed e.g. impacting on trees behind.

To give you an example one of them had the head embedded about 2' into a banana tree just off to the right of the target and the arrow shaft had cleanly broken at the halfway point :-o

But for sure I'll prob pick up some more better suited spined arrows as my next purchase.

greysides

Banana tree?

was.deevey

Banana tree?

I'm currently living in Asia, don't worry I'm not taking potshots in the botanic gardens

May as well show off the damage - very clean breaks all round

greysides

The only time I have suffered damage like that was from arrows glancing off something when they weren't flying straight.

fenris

I would expect the points to be rammed up inside the shaft like that if you were shooting at a wall at short range.

From what you were describing it sounds like you possibly had damaged arrows to begin with, then the fact that you were probably glancing them off of objects (ricochets?) was just the final straw and revealed whatever weaknesses were there already, there is not a huge amount of tolerance for abuse on modern arrows, being light and fast means that the arrows are really engineered to be the bare minimum needed to get the pointy end to the target and not explode in your face on release.

There are some nicely scary Youtube clips of damaged arrows making a mess of archers hands, the easton jazz or sky arts are good cheap options for arrows that you will probably not tempt you to take a chance with if they get damaged.

NavanJames

Don't those Beman's have pre-applied vanes for shooting out of a compound ... and your shooting off the shelf? That's never going to work. At the very least if you're shooting vanes get some sort of cheap elevated rest. The Bear weather rest is an option ... a couple of euros on eBay.

Regards, James.

was.deevey

Don't those Beman's have pre-applied vanes for shooting out of a compound ... and your shooting off the shelf? That's never going to work. At the very least if you're shooting vanes get some sort of cheap elevated rest. The Bear weather rest is an option ... a couple of euros on eBay.

They do (did), however they weren't hitting the shelf (with cock facing in - cock out they were bouncing), and flew just fine both in and outdoor. I had a rest when I started and genuinely just didn't like it, call me weird or whatever

Feathers will be on my next batch however.

Tnx everyone.