Well, with our new Covid-19 inspired health policy at work (and it's a good policy too), now that I have got a bit of a runny nose due to the change of season, I have had to stay away from work for a few days.
When one is feeling perfectly healthy other than a sniffle, that's not easy, so yesterday I went into my workshop with an idea for making some useful 160 grain blunts.
I usually use the Ace Hex Blunts, and reckon they are brilliant, but with our dollar the way it is, importing a dozen and a half 160 grainers would cost me well over $100 landed.
My bunny hunting mate, who uses a wheely bow, simply puts a hardened steel washer between his field point and the insert. That works really well.
So I got to thinking.....
Now I only use wooden arrows and glue-on points etc, so I put a 145 grain glue-on blunt in the lathe, and turned a step on the end to suit the hole in some thick 1/4" hardened steel washers I had laying around. I adjusted the length of the step so the altered blunt and the washer together weighed in at 160 grains. Then I silver soldered the bits together.
I mounted it up on a well tuned heavy Red Balau hardwood shaft and started shooting it to see how it shot and how it might last. The arrow weighs in at 825 grains and that, launched from my 75lb longbow, sure hits with authority.
After shooting it for an hour or so, bashing pine cones, tennis balls, coke cans, the ground, dry cow pies and a few thistles, it's been great. It shoots right where I look, it doesn't bury under the grass, and so far, it hasn't broken.
I'm really pleased with it.
So I made up another eleven "fat blunts" to give me an even dozen.
It only took me an hour and twenty minutes to make the other eleven, time well spent I reckon. It will take me much much longer than that to wreck them, and rest assured, I'll have fun trying to.
Best
Lex
Topic: Improvising (Read 913 times)
