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in reply to: Scrappy one down #54023
Good work, Charlie. I’ve always found nontypical antlers of far greater interest and art value than boring old perfect symmetry. 😛 Each is a one-off.
And I like your ATV! 😆
in reply to: Anyone ever use these heads? #53183What I don’t like about the Steel Force heads is the lumpy ferrule and the mirror finish. The Tuffhead is basically a SF with an improved ferrule and a carbon finish to add slickness and kill the glint. But, having shot both, I’d take SF over the Woodsman any day. It’s just a whole lot stronger. IMHO.
in reply to: Centering glue on broadheads #53179Jans — I have a couple dozen Tuffheads, both 225 and 300, mounted on arrows, both glue-ons with woodies and screw-ins with glue-on adapters, and have never had a single problem with wobble. So it’s not the heads themselves. My woods are 23/64, though I can’t see how it could matter with 11/32 as the taper is the same.
On broadhead orientation, of course it doesn’t matter to accuracy. But for me it does matter for aiming as I have a problem with being aware of the broadhead in my peripheral vision, which I don’t want. So I mount my heads horizontally where they are least visible at full draw. This is easy to do with screw ins by not gluing in the shaft insert until you have your shafts fletched; that way you can screw a head all the way into the insert then position the insert to line the head up where you want it, and finally glue the insert in. With woodies, of course perfect alignment trumps uniform orientation.
in reply to: Leave Strung in Woods? #53036Paleo — If your bow is cumbersome to carry, you’re packing too much bow. Some 3-piece takedowns, for example, look like tree trunks and weigh the same. My Shrew Classic Hunter weighs about 1.5# and maybe twice that with a loaded bow quiver — I hardly even feel it in my hand. I personally won’t leave my bow anywhere beyond immediate reach when hunting. If you’re walking in and out 2 miles each way in the dark … wow. I rarely enter the woods before I have enough light to walk quietly and shoot if an op appeared. And years ago I quit hunting until black dark when I got tired of blood-trailing by flashlight. Now I leave with enough time to at least tip-toe well out of the core hunting area before it’s really dark. I hunt in and hunt back out and really enjoy that part. IMHO
in reply to: 25 Degree angle of cut? #52213I can’t recall if I read it or Doc Ashby stated it to me, but the 25 degrees proved in his testing to be the best combo of effective cutting and edge maintenance. A higher angle is tougher but not as sharp, and a lower angle is sharper but too thin to maintain that sharpness if it impacts heavy bone. 25 degrees thus is a happy compromise.
On the KME sharpener, Ron/Sharpster told me that the best you can do with a guide on a jig like that is a close approximation, while most 25 degree heads today, like the Tuffheads and other top-end single-bevels, are machined at precisely 25 degrees. So you simply eyeball the jig angle to match the blade angle and there you go. Take a few swipes with a fine stone and inspect the edge to see if it’s contacting dead-on, or high or low, and re-adjust. I do the same with my knives … adjust the jig to match the blade bevel angle, check the contact with a few strokes, readjust as necessary, and away you go. It takes only seconds.
in reply to: Takedown from a one piece bow? #52206No I haven’t. But I have made several dozen bows, including several take-downs. More importantly, this question has come up here before. And everyone, as I recall, agreed, as I do, that it’s a real bad idea. Any sort of coupling device changes the tillering. So a bow should be made from the get-go as either a one-piece or a take-down. Best bet is to sell the one-piece and buy a take-down. I for one will never ever buy or build another bow that’s not a take-down, and I take only one flight with a bow per year, if that. They’re also great for backpacking, and if you need to send them someplace by mail, etc. IMHO
in reply to: How to find a Alaska or BC hunt #52200I’ve been there several times and my advice is to try and find a friend to go with you and do a fly-in, self-guided drop camp. Or better yet a float hunt, where they drop you upstream and you take as long as you like to float down for the pickup. The Moose John is famous for this but IMHO over-hunted. Just check and double-triple check any outfitter, guide, or flying service before booking. Trust me, it’s even more important in AK than the lowr 48. And for the money and odds of bring home the meat and horns, I recommend caribou over moose.
in reply to: Changing my taget practice #52197That’s a clean and mean looking bow, Shawn. Anyone who is bored with practice needs to use some imagination. Rifle practice gets boring. Compound machine practice is boring. Trad practice is an art form with endless possibilities. 😀
in reply to: Have You Gotten Lost? #52187Giggle — Even if no one else does, I get it. You’re a clever one. 😛
in reply to: In love again for the first time #52186S. Tex — I shoot both woods and carbons. The former for their soul and beauty (they were living things, just like us). I shoot carbons for their consistency, reliability, convenience of switching screw-in points, and potential for endless EFOC. On woods I would caution that there are woods and there are woods. If you want resiliance and weight, you have many choices. If you want light weight for high FOC, you have fewer choices, and that’s the pinch. I am now shooting Sitka spruce and with a 300 Tuffy glue-on I get in the low 20s FOC, which was good enough to kill an elk this year. I am not a fan of poc, other than the way it smells. My basic advice is to do your homework and buy the right wood from a good source and pay the extra for closely matched shafts, weight and spine. Basically, to get woods that shoot as well as carbons you have to pay more and do more work. But I believe it’s worth it. I also love four-fletch. Enjoy.
in reply to: OK it finally happened and I need to vent #42955I started the first state BHA chapter, here in CO, simply by coordinating with the national board and notifying everyone I knew in CO who would be interested, mostly trad bowhunters. We started small but by diving in and working hard and getting lots of media attention, we grew quickly. It just takes one person, with a few serious friends and helpers, to get a chapter going. At the state level it’s purely a grassroots deal but requires someone to send out emails updating members on problem areas and situations, urging members to attend meetings that affect our concerns, like overuse and abuse by ATVs on public lands,ethical and wildlife management, habitat conservation, and anything that has impact on hunting and equitable public lands access. Check out the national BHA website at http://www.backcountryhunters.org then contact Rose Calcar for info on forming a chapter. You might also want to look at http://www.coloradobackcountryhunters.org for an example of a very active and successful chapter. Larry Fischer of TBM is now on the national board and the single largest contingent of hunters are trad bowhunters. Greg Munther, a frequent TBM contributor, is the MT chapter chair for instance. Yes, BHA is most active in the West because that’s where we have the most public land. But BHA is flexible, working on what a chapter’s members want to work on, and there’s no reason we don’t have active chapters all over the country except that nobody has taken the initiative to start them. I’m leaving tomorrow for a week of whitetail chasing in the Ozarks but will be happy to help anyone who is serious about forming a state chapter. State chapters range from informal, like CO (and my preference), to quite formal with their own board, like Idaho. Get some! 😀 Dave
in reply to: Arrow weight #41609There is “good enough” and there is “good as possible.” My limites are 10 grains max from lightest to heaviest with most clustered in the middle, and 5 pounds spine. Usually in a dozen shafts, more or less half will be really close and shoot good groups. Those become hunting shafts and the others practice, stumpers, small game, etc. With wood shafts it’s definitely “you get what you pay for” insofar as it costs more for someone to sort out matching straight shafts and that cost is passed along to us. An arrowmaker friend recently went through more than a hundred shafts to find fewer than a dozen that met my specs.
in reply to: OK it finally happened and I need to vent #41603Susan — form a loca BHA chapter and fight back. It’s working elsewhere and nobody else is going to take on this fight for us, the habitat, the wildlife, and sanity in an insane world. 😀
in reply to: Hardwood shafts? #40397Icoated three shafts yesterday with Smooth-On, which is a clear, viscous epoxy adhesive, from back of head 4″ down the shaft. By using blue take around head bevel and at the stopping point on the shafts, it came out nice and neat and some 64th” thick. I hope that’s enough to provide significant reinforcement against breakage. I plan to let them cure a good long time before using. The point is, this isn’t just a “finish,” but a significant layer of epoxy that’s thicker than aluminum shafting. We shall see …
Meanwhile I will definitely wrap some shafts with synthetic sinew dipped in Smooth-on. If nothing else the thread should act as a splint so that if a shaft breaks on impact at least it should hold together so that the head portion in front of the break will still receive at least some of the momentum of the shaft behind the break. Either method–Smooth-On or sinew wrap–sits OK with my sense of aesthetics since the sinew/thread is traditional, way traditional, and the Smooth-On is invisible. If the additional weight up front is significat I can compensate by dropping back from 300 to 225 head weights, as both (Tuffheads) have identical dimensions except thickness.
But all such will have to wait my return from Arkansas for a week of hunting what to me is “exotic” big game — whitetails. 😀
in reply to: Nothing is wasted … #39463Here is the teddy bear I expected to find in the pics, not that he needs any more calories …
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