I have often wondered myself if there is a difference between bows made with new material and those made ‘back in the day’. It doesn’t seem that the materials have changed much, but maybe limb design has. I can say that bows that look to be designed exactly the same can shoot completely differently, in my experience.

I too doubt this question can be meaningfully answered. I would say that with refined bowyer technology and bow design, and the intro of elements like carbon and cross-weave glass lams, that in general newer bows should be faster than older. But a really great older bow would still be faster than a mill-run newer bow. My only personal experience was when I injured my shoulder over-practicing one spring some years ago and was forced to drop permanently from around 64# to 55# or so, my new lighter bow, a Sleybow recurve, was 10 fps faster with the same arrows than my old heavier JimBow. But then the JimBow wasn’t exactly an antique. The main diffs I see in newer custom bows include increased forgiveness of shooting form faults, smoother pull, less hand shock, quieter, and esp. with the Shrews I currently shoot exclusively no stack in shorter bows. My personal bias is in favor of truly custom-made bows as opposed to factory bows, no matter age, price, whatever. dp

Looking at the bows for nearly fifty years now, I would say the biggest advantage to modern bows is actually the no stretch strings. I use the modern strings on old bows and they perform right up there with the new one of similar design. You can fool with limb design/length/material, etc., and enhance performance, but design for design, there is little difference in my experience….and I have shot a lot of bows 8^).

Good point, George. But isn’t there risk in using fast-flight type strings on some of the early glass lam bows? I’ve always heard you can use them on old wood bows and newer lam bows, but not older lam bows? Can you shed any light on this? dave

There were many dogs of yesteryear right along side some real screamers. Same as it is today.