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in reply to: Veritas arrow jig #25984
Hello SB, and welcome to tradbow.com. While someone may yet show up with info for you, it appears from here that nobody is familiar with the Veritas. Always a good place to start is tracking down the manufacturer, which generally isn’t hard, and telling them the problem. Best luck, Dave
in reply to: Cheap targets #25737Well Jody, after you walk three girls through puberty, high school and college, I’m betting you’ll be sweet as pie to any guys who may come courting, in hopes they’ll take ’em off your hands and you can hunt and fish more. 😛
Targets — years ago I started using a dirt pile for broadhead practice. These days, when it’s not muddy, I use it for field points as well. Most of the year dandelions, grass clumps, etc. provide good targets … rather like stump shooting without leaving your yard. Sand works too and of course both will be abrasive to your shafts, so I don’t use my ultra-high-dollar trophy arrows for this (because I don’t own any such).
in reply to: Buying First Trad Bow #25727Come on in, Barefoot, and welcome.
Unfortunately, those wood e-bay longbows don’t have much going for them and IMHO it would be a huge mistake for you to try and start with one. You can hardly even buy a good wood stave for that price, much less a bow. Expect it to stack badly, have tremendous hand shock, and likely to break before long. The $45 price suggest that you are on a tight budget. I’m afraid you’ll never get into a decent bow for that price. Rather, I strongly suggest that you save your coins until you have enough, at least $200 to $300, to buy a quality used recurve or longbow that will give you good service for many years and not beat you up every time you shoot it.
Other opinions? I know someone here was looking into these same e-bay bows several weeks ago, but don’t know if they ever bought one or not. Good luck, Dave
in reply to: Custom skinner #23612Mojo — I’ve done it twice with smaller Helle blades (unbelievably cheap for the quality) — once with antler, the other with osage scrap from bow-building. It’s really easy in either case: For “slab” handles cut your wood, antler, whatever, to the length of the handle then shape it (I use a fine-grit belt sander for the rough work), buff the handle steel with fine-grit paper, and glue handles in place (I use two-tube epoxy. That’s it. To use a solid piece of antler cut it to the right length and drill a hole down what will be the top end just big enough to accept the blade tange with a little tapping pressure. Fill in the hole around the tang with epoxy. Bingo. Real knife makers will no doubt scoff that the crudeness of this method, but for an amateur it’s easy, fast, requires no special tools, and looks and works great. I still have an old Shrade that I removed the original handle from and replaced with a section of antler from my first-ever elk, (1981). Can’t count the critters I’ve skint with it over the decades and it’s still in fine shape, though set aside since I got the Helle. Not much to lose in trying.
in reply to: Bow Making Class #22340Thanks, Clay. I’ve been wanting to find that link for my own obvious purposes. 😀
in reply to: Wisconsin Albinos #22339Patrick said: “we are not giving nature an even hand in allowing evolution to run its course.”
Brother, ain’t that true for nearly every tiny last thing in the universe that we hold sway over? Including our own species’ future. 🙁
in reply to: Gearing Up For Heavy Bows #22334Duck, sounds like you know what you want to do, why, and have a good start on the how. Long ago I was a “trainer” in an iron gym and while injuries preclude me from it these days I still believe strongly (no pun) in a generalized strengthening program based on calesthenics and iron — that is, you don’t just work to strengthen the arm, neck, and back muscles you’ll need to easily pull and hold a super-heavy bow, but rather you strengthen your entire upper body as the first step, then with that groundwork in place you are set to do specialized training for the end goal without so much risk of injury. Damn but I miss pumping iron, but apparently iron gyms are hard to find these days as most have gone to machines … boring and not nearly so efficient at getting the job done. That’s my story/personal history and I’m sticking to it. If you enjoy the process, well, tuning-up the old body, for no matter what reason, is always one of the best things you can do for yourself. JUst don’t rush it, as I did, and hurt yourself. Says grandpa …
in reply to: Wisconsin Albinos #22197Ahh, brother Patrick! Back from your latest long disappearance to stir the pot for us again. 😆 Seriously, I hope all is well in your world. And I’ll take your bait …
Albinoism as a defect? From an individual survival standpoint, that would sure seem the case, as it makes animals so very visible most of the year, including the predation-critical infant and juvenile periods. But from an evolutionary viewpoint, aside from crippling deformities that assure early death before reproduction, I don’t know that genetics can make mistakes. Tossing out new “ideas” at random and testing for what works and what doesn’t, keeping what works in the genetic line and weeding out what doesn’t work, is the core function of evolution; that’s how it works. And we simply aren’t qualified, either intellectually or morally, to decide what “should” or “should not” be allowed to continue. So in the long run and big picture there are no genetic mistakes. From our short-term individual views, some of us would like to hunt them, while others of us want to see them protected precisely because they are rare and thus beautiful. If albinos were utterly common everywhere, they cwould cease to be “special” and there would be no public pressure for protection. Similarly, in “normal” situations where albinos don’t appear in localized groups but only as very rare scattered individuals, they are not protected. I’ve seen exactly one wild albino elk in more than 30 years of seeing elk almost daily — a calf, two springs ago. Never saw it again. I for one would never shoot an albino anything (or melano, the black equivalent), but that’s an aesthetic choice, not a moral choice. It’s all fun. Dave
in reply to: Bow Making Class #21229Sounds like good fun. Meanwhile, some months ago Clay Hayes did a great selfbow build-along here, which you’ll enjoy and learn from. Alas, Clay or Robin or someone else with better search skills than I have will have to locate it for you and provide a link. It’s all fun, Dave
in reply to: Looking For a Longbow #21228Phil — My first longbow, many years ago now, was a top-name custom straight “Hill style” stick, 64″. I couldn’t hit anything with it, and the length caused me endless clearance problems when hunting. So I sold it and returned to recurves for a few more years. Then hybrid longbows showed up, aka reflex-deflex (correctly, deflex-reflex) and all was changed. Basically this design spreads the advantages of recurved tips through the length of the limbs so you get most of the same advantages yet the looks and feel of a longbow and more slender riser and grip than on most recurves. My personal favorite is a 54″ Shrew Classic Hunter, but there are many good ones out there. So my first advice is to get a hybrid, not a Hill for starters, and the shorter you can shoot well, the better for hunting. Second bit of advice is to forget buying a cheap factory longbow for starters and look around, in our classifieds here, eBay and elsewhere, as there’s a constant abundance of great deals on great used custom bows. In that draw weight you should find plenty to choose from. Good luck, Dave
in reply to: Quiver help #19329Ed — Thanks for that “hidden in plain sight” find, and good to have you posting here at tradbow. Dave
in reply to: Is it the Traditional way? #17104Well then, maybe we’re not so far off topic after all. Makes good sense that “throwback” folks like us, who find deep satisfaction in pursuing an “antique and inefficient” means of hunting, should also be deeply interested in other aspects of pre-history–before writing and civilization [that is, living in cities]. We have the best of both worlds … I hope!:P
in reply to: Wood for riser? #17100Bully — We have some folks here, George T. and Todd and others, who know far more than I ever will about these things and I trust they will correct me when I’m wrong, but my experience and the logic of basic physical suggest that a riser is like a boat anchor, dead in the water but what the living and working parts, the limbs, are secured to. So it doesn’t matter a whit what wood or other material you use in a riser, so long as the riser won’t break and is attached properly, the fade-outs specifally, to the limbs. I’d go for eye appeal. IMHO
in reply to: Is it the Traditional way? #16924Mudd — While we’re getting radically off-topic here, sometimes it’s fun and I’ve always been keenly interested in Meadowcroft, though I’ve never seen it and never likely will. Thing is, until very recently and still in some circles, archaeologists etc. told us that the first humans arrived in N.A. only 12-14,000 years ago, crossing the Berengian connection between AK and Siberia. Or vice versa rather. Now I ask, how did those folks move fast enough to have gotten all the way from AK to PA at least 2,000 years before they first got here? In other words, the scientific dating of the Meadowcroft site has turned early N.A. history on it’s ear and forced complacent academics to take another look. There are similar sites clear down in S. America that are as old or older. Clearly, there was more than one human migration here, and probably from more than one origin. This stuff fascinates me, whether they used tripods to hunt mammoths from or not. 😆
in reply to: lefty shooting wood arrows #15587TJ’s advice is sound, as always. Yet arrowsmiths who go to this level of care will be hard to find and in a lifetime of shooting wood arrows I’m yet to have one split on me like that. In short, if you’re building your own arrows you might as well do it right, assuming you can find a rift to work with. Otherwise I wouldn’t worry about it. Few others do.
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