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Alright, here a couple of good images from the last few days…
This is about my favourite image, because this shot wrecked a couple of things.. The shaft actually failed just in front of the fletching, which I suspect must be the consequences of an earlier impact weakening the shaft there. I don’t remember a particular impact but I’m pretty rough on my arrows. You can see that the head only penetrated about an inch before it was stopped in it’s tracks (courtesy of a gnarly joint and head failure), perhaps that excess energy just had to go somewhere. You can see the tail end flying past in the still taken from video.
Here you can see that head after it was excavated from the bone. I’ve shot these heads through a couple inches of bone before but hitting the gnarly joint where it did was not kind to it… You can see the head bent sharply right in front of the ferule. I guess this is where the near full length ferrule of the Tuffhead earns it’s money.
This is one of the outback’s after shooting through the thin flat part of the humerus. I haven’t touched it besides rinsing it off and it looks immaculate. I’ve ruined a few of these over the years and lost even more, typically where I’ve seen them fail is the thin arms extending back past the screw getting bent out of shape. I’ve never seen one bend in front of the ferrule like the one above did.
Here is something that Dave et al have reported as a common failure but I have only just encountered myself. It is a failure in both the Al insert and the steel adaptor. The cause was a glancing strike on the long part of the bone. I’m not sure if the damage occurred when the head struck the bone and was deflected away (impact was hard enough to cut a long gouge into the bone) or if it was when the shaft struck the bone after the broadhead passed by. I believe this is the kind of bone strike that Doc Asby’s data showed a 30% failure in C shafts compared to 3% failure in hardwood shafts.
There’s nothing revelatory in that, just confirmations of other’s reporting. I’d love to try some tuffheads on some decent hardwood shafts. From reading the good doc’s findings that ought to be about the most absurdly tough hunting arrow getting around.
Jim
PS
I really want to shoot the tuffhead at something stupid (like concrete) but can’t come up with any reasonable justification for it 😉
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ausjim wrote:
Thus the reason for all the experiments into one-piece brass and steel inserts,internal footings and slow-cure epoxies … and the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of arrows destroyed against armor plate!
Dave, the 2 best – toughest – wood shafts tested were the Forgewooda and hickory; especially the tapered hickories (I think it helps to lower the shaft’s “push’ from its rear mass). These woods proved more durable than heavier hardwoods, such as Ipe and purple heart. The key to decreasing glue failure is good shaft and ferrule prep and fit, and the use of slow-cure epoxy.
Ed
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