Why is your bow shoot better than mine?

[mzombek]

Hey guys,
I have made 3 bows fiberglass/wood bow to this date. I have used Chery, Ash and Cocobolo, What makes bows differ from each other (they way they shoot). I have read that some of the guys have used the same wood that I do.
If 5 people made a longbow using the same print at the same #'s, Would they all shoot the same?
Thanks
Z

[Troy D. Breeding]

Varried point of the sight window can change the required spine of the shaft.

How each bow is tillered also makes for different shooting.

Really too many variables to count.

Troy

[Roy from Pa]

On lam bows a lot has to do with the core lams. I think bamboo core lams are the fastest.

[macbow]

Some years ago I was making glass/wood bows. Started with Bingham and then modified.
They were not bad, in fact my son in law still loves the one I gave him.
I came to the conclusion, that I could not make them as good as the guys with lots of experience and who had done plenty of research.

[HMlongbow]

I do believe that bamboo is a great core wood, but red elm and actionwood is also good.  The difference in the three is bamboo has great cast and smoothness, the elm is a bit stiffer but still has smoothness and actionwood has a bit stiffer feel and the best of all three for speed.  This is what I have found and hope it helps.  
The limbs when tillering try at the fade outs, check for tiller then every five inches to the nock ends and keep the tiller as close to 1/16" and it will shoot smooth and fast.  I believe that if you keep this true you have a great cast and accurate bow.  It does take a bit longer but you will see the difference.
good shooting

[wildcat hunter]

I just finished a Locust bow - very strong", I can only pull it about 26" ( I shoot a 30" arrow ) but it puts the arrows where I want them. It shoots better than my laminated bows ( store bought ).

[BenBow]

Actually Kenny M built a series of similar bows only differing in the core material and there was minimal difference in speed with walnut being slightly faster and if I remember correctly he could tell no difference in feel. Here's a link.    Kenny\\'s bow test

[Dmaxshawn]

Kenny's experiment provved that walnut was the fastest of all the core woods he tried.  But I mean hey folks were not splitting hairs here.  It was only 2 FPS faster.  Yes its faster but 2FPS isnt going to make a hill of beans to deer at 20 yards.  If they want to duck it there going to.  

Also if using walnut as a core be sure to .005 to your stack thickness to achieve the desired weight your wanting.  I.E.   if a recipe calls for a .350 stack with A-boo then your going to want to make it .355 with walnut cores.  

Just some things Ive learned over the past few years.

[Glunt]

I think the biggest thing to take away from Kenny's experiment is that there isn't going to be a big difference.  Walnut came out on top by a little, but thats in one design and minor tiller differences in the same design can effect things.  I would bet that you could build 5-6 bows as similar as possible with identical core woods and find you have a few fps difference between them.

Not taking away anything from Kennys test.  I think was good info and I buy most of my stuff from him.  I just think that a wide scale test with handmade bows, measuring the "feel" factor, and spreading those results over the hundreds (thousands) of bow designs, is tough to accomplish with conclusive results.

[BenBow]

The "feel factor" is so subjective. My bow feels different because I feel different. Feeling has more to do with me than the bow. Mental expectations cloud reality too. This has been shown many times in blind taste tests where the taster was told one was a fancy wine and the other was a box wine. The tasters always said the fancy one tasted way better than the box when in reality they were both the same box wine. Make sure you have an open mind.