Fast flight & Selfbows

[cmoore]

Does anybody know if selfbows are viable candidates for the use of fast flight strings?. I strung & shot my osage selfbow yesterday with a FF string & it was shooting a treat!, but I've heard before that if the bow isn't rated to use FF she may go kapow!. How do I know wether or not she can handle the fast flight?

[Stickbow Hunter]

A mate and I have used Flemish Twist strings made from Fast Flight and Dyna Flight on our self bows for probably twenty years with no ill effects to the bows. I know some people are against it but we have found no reason not to.

Jeff

[Gringa Bows]

just put extra strands in the loops......

[greybeard]

just put extra strands in the loops......

As Rod stated 'put extra strands in the loops'.

I've used these low stretch string materials on my selfbows for years and never had a problem.

Daryl.

[perry]

I used to buy the rubbish that the Low / No stretch modern synthetics would damage your Wooden Bow and shot Dacron for Years. Then I made a Linen String, Bow shot great with no handshock as the String did not Stretch and maximum energy was delivered to the Arrow. So I made a TS1 String, very similar shooting qualities to the Linen String. I use Dyna Flyte now cause TS1 went off the market, it's cheap and shoots well. My Strings are 12 - 14 Strand and I do not pad the Loops. No issues.

regards Perry

[cmoore]

Cheers for the advice and info gentleman, I guess you can't believe everything you read on the interweb .... when I first drew the bow with the fast flight on her I was holding my breath waiting for the batman style 'KAPOW!' when I got to full draw

[Dennis La Varenne]

cmoore,

Both Jeff and I have used all of the synthetic non-stretch string material since it first came out, excepting Kevlar which does break after about 1200 shots. I don't think Kevlar is used for string material these days.

I have always used the non-stretch stuff on all my wood bows and never gave it a thought. I used it on my glassed bows as well. Not a single bow has suffered any damage greater than one string made for me by a dealer using the old serving used for compound bows which was meant for resisting abrasion on wheels.

It caused some impression into the soft corewood (Yew) of this particular bow, but after learning to make my own Flemish strings which have naturally reinforced loops of full thickness of strands which can easily be further reinforced by adding short lengths to further thicken the loops and reduce the load concentrated into the string grooves.

In the old days, the most trouble came with the use of Fastflight and its related materials when served with the old serving material or the newer compound bow abrasion resistant serving which caused longitudinal splitting on both sides of the shoulders of the nock grooves of the old very thin limbed recurved bows. The cores crushed and the string bit into the fibreglass of the shoulders of the nock groove, splitting the limb longitudinally.

That, I think, is the reason why the furphy got started. It was applied to all bows regardless. Thick limbed bows were nowhere near as susceptible. Just the same, we usually reinforced our loops with 3 or 4 additional short pieces of string to spread the load over a somewhat greater surface area.

For the past decade or more, I have not bothered with the reinforcing, even on my collection of old bows from before the fibreglass era of archery. It is just not a problem, even on bows of this vintage so long as the bow is sound in the normal bowmaking sense of the word.

In another thread - http://www.ozbow.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14916, these old bows were being shot using a thin 15 strand Flemish white Fastfligh string.

The most recommendable thing about this material is that there is a visible increase in arrow velocity and, compared to Dacron, an almost complete absence of string-generated handshock.

Handshock is left-over energy from the limbs not transferred to the arrow due to the lengthening of the Dacron at full draw and the same lengthening and shortening in a wave pattern at the end of the power stroke which causes the limbs to oscillate in a similar wave fashion far more than Fastflight does.

How anybody can say that a bow which has such obvious Dacron-string-generated handshock is gentler on the bow is beyond me, but very large number of American trad archers and bowmakers persist in perpetuating this fallacy.

Fastflight also has the benefit of being far more abrasion resistant than Dacron which did wear markedly with a lot of use, especially at the centre serving and string loops and along he body of the string. This shortcoming does not seem to apply to Fastflight and similar materials.

[Ian Turner]

Hi all I was always told that unless a bow, even modern ones, was specifically made to shoot fast flyte etc that the lack of stretch/give after the shot placed a lot of strain on the limbs particularly recurves and it shortens bow life and may damage the limbs sooner than later.
I was also told that the limb tips need to be built for fast flyte etc otherwise the string cuts through them much as Dennis staes above.
As i say thats the info i have been given take it or leave it.
Cheers

[Dennis La Varenne]

Ian,

The info has been wrong for a long time. It is a way of avoiding any claims or legal liability in the US system. It is up to you what you do with your bow. The reasons give as you quote have been utter rubbish for at least 15 years.

What is told about fastflight type material and what is the actual truth which can only be ascertained through actual testing is very different. I have tested it for a very very long time on all manner of bows, including the thin-limbed recurved bows of the 1950s I have in my collection. There has not been a single instance of damage yet.

However, I have seen old recurves with extremely thin endless strings which have damaged the bow in the manner I described above. It you change from an endless string to a Flemish string with its more padded loops, the problem is solved. That is how I string my old recurves.

As I described above about felt recoil in a bow points to the fact that the energy stored in a bows limbs at drawlength is much more efficiently transferred to an arrow if the intermediary attachment (the string) has no give in it. That is basic common sense. What has been put out by the manufacturers which you quote is again absolute rubbish.

The difference between the stretch and non-stretch strings and their effect on a bow's limbs can be compared to shooting a seriously light arrow with its consequent hand shock to that of a bow shooting an arrow which meets the trad ratio of draw weight : arrow mass.

The nonsense about bows being specifically made for fastfligh strings is nothing more than the application of thicker tip overlays to spread the load over a greater surface area rather than have them sitting on a narrow limb section at the nock shoulders. Ask any of these manufacturers how they would build you a specific Dacron use bow and see what sort of answer you get. It is only about having a thick cross-section at the nock shoulders - nothing else.

All the pre-fibreglass trad bows had thick cross sections at their nocks and used non-stretch natural fibre material for their strings - Linen and Hemp. So what frailty was later built into more modern fibreglass bows against which the old all-wood bows were prooved. Just this comparison alone should alert you to the existence of some kind of BS in the US bowmaking industry.

This is not a go at your intelligence, Ian. You are the victim in this. I get annoyed when bow manufacturers go on about with this kind of rubbish when actual testing proves the opposite. It is the archery equivalent of John Howard's 'children overboard' story.

[CraigH]

The nonsense about bows being specifically made for fastfligh strings is nothing more than the application of thicker tip overlays to spread the load over a greater surface area rather than have them sitting on a narrow limb section at the nock shoulders.

Agreed 100%. I know Chad Weaver (good string builder from the states) has used high performance strings (can't remember whether padded or not.) on his older bows for many years and no issues.