Spine weight increase for woods

[lovellj]

#7602

So, I started my archery career 12 yrs ago shooting woods and have an affection for them. I’ve always shot a 50# @ 28″ draw longbow. I learned about FOC and went to carbons and achieved A 24% FOC and they really do shoot good. I tried attaing FOC with my woods and they shot like wet noodles. My question is this, if I were to increase spine weight could I attain some reasonable FOC with woods and they shoot good? If I want to shoot about 300gr up front, what spine weight would you recomend?

Thanks in advance for your input,

John

[Stephen Graf]

#8154

I too have recently gone back to wood. I don’t have a lot of experience with it yet, but here’s what I can say.

Firstly, Ashby says that the most important factor for good penetration is weight. 650 grains minimum. So I take that as the guiding principle.

Secondly, You an do some stuff to increase your FOC, like tapering the back of the arrow.

So I have tried several hard woods but ended up with douglas fir shafts in a about 70-75 spine range. I think they are around 29″ BOP and I have a 200 grain point on them. (190 grn with a bit of lead added). Total weight about 650 gns.

I will either tip them with tough heads or abowyers to hunt with.

You can get spine weights as high as 100 from surewood shafts. But chasing high FOC with wood is a fools errand.

My advice is to build a heavy strong shaft that will shoot at least 160 fps and flies straight and true.

[lovellj]

#8277

Steve,

Thanks for the input. What weight bow are you shooting those arrows with?

[Stephen Graf]

#8636

Lovellj wrote: Steve,

Thanks for the input. What weight bow are you shooting those arrows with?

I set them up with my 55# American Semi-longbow, but they also fly well out of my 48# bow of the same design.

[lovellj]

#9385

Thanks again. I’ll give that spine weight a try.

[Abel]

#12914

Here’s what I have right now. I do have some hardwoods from Forrester that I have to build up and will see how they do.

Tapered 70-75 Cedar shafts

30.25″

225 tuffhead

Don’t know total grns

FOC=20.7%

Straight Cedar 75-80 spine

29.5″

430grns

300gr tuffhead

730grs overall

FOC= 22%

All arrows fletched with 5 1/5″ shields.

I was able to get the tapered shafts to shoot the 300’s real well, but I haven’t checked FOC on them yet.

[lovellj]

#17403

Abel, Thanks very much for the information. When you get a chance please let me know how the straight cedars shoot for you as that’d probably be the way I go. If I don’t have to mess with tapers I’d prefer it.

Thanks again

[Abel]

#17500

The straight’s shoot great.

[wojo14]

#17584

I too am a lover of longbows and wood! I shoot doug fir as well right now. I am going to try hard woods soon. The highest foc I got was 17%.

Steve is right. On wood, weight is first objective!

My next experiment is hard woods and different type of feather cuts. I went from 5″ trad cuts to a 4″ trad cut.

Anyone try 3″ or 4″ 4 fletch?

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