Hand Shock and What to do?

[2fletch]

Last summer I picked up a beautiful bow from an anonymous bowyer at Denton Hill. It was a static recurve with lots of nice woods. It was over a week later when I shot the bow and wow was I surprised. The hand shock was huge. I don't remember seeing that discussed here, and wondered if anyone else had experienced bad hand shock and what they were able to do to help or eliminate it. I'll come back in later with what we did that seemed to improve it. I'd like to hear what others have done for this problem.
 

[The Whittler]

If it has dacron change to FF. The FF will eliminate the hand shock.

If you already have FF on the bow, then there's not much that will stop it.

Some will say heaver arrow, or hold the bow different, it's not going to eliminate shock. Good luck.

[eflanders]

Try a set of limbsavers. Not exactly traditional, but they do work.

[KochNE]

How wide are the recurves?  Mass at the tips is the primary reason for handshock.  Less mass= less inertia= less handshock.  Unless you can narrow the tips to lower their mass...you'll hafta live with it.

[Orion]

Fast flite type string will reduce hand shock by stopping forward limb travel faster and with less vibration, however, it won't eliminate it.  A heavy arrow does help to reduce handshock as well.  A loose grip helps reduce the felt hand shock.  The bow still jumps in the hand, but less of the extra energy is transferred to your bow arm with a loose grip. If it's a static recurve with the overbuilt tips laminated from the belly side, there's not much you can do about it. Just too much mass out there at the end of  the limbs that wants to keep moving at the end of the shot.

[Pete W]

String change, silencer placement and weight, brace height, and keep arrows at over 8GR/#, are the places I look to minimize hand shock.

 Pete

[J. Oles]

An increase in brace height may help as well.

[Looper]

Shoot a really heavy arrow (12 gpp or more) out of it and see what it does.  

If none of that stuff works, the tiller could be off. If the limbs don't release at the same time, it'll shock you pretty bad.

[Pat B]

Don, generally hand shock is the result of limbs being out of time with each other or too much tip weight. Heavy arrows can help eliminate it and in my opinion a dacron string would be less apt to cause handshock than FF because it will absorbe more of the vibrations than a ff string.

[trad_bowhunter1965]

Originally posted by The Whittler:
If it has dacron change to FF. The FF will eliminate the hand shock.

If you already have FF on the bow, then there's not much that will stop it.

Some will say heaver arrow, or hold the bow different, it's not going to eliminate shock. Good luck.

Ditto

[Steelhead]

A well made low strand count string can help in my experinece with the right silencers in the right place.The perfect brace hieght never hurt.A heavy arrow helps.Limbsavers when desperate placed just above the fadeouts.

A quiver can help and one with some mass weight to it helps more.An all rubber Selway Soft Cote slide on loaded with some heavy arrows works well to dampen a bow out more.Push it down the fadeouts as far as possible

A strong bowarm and clean release never hurts.

Trim the limb tips down if thier overly cumbersome.

A couple rubber roll on grips might ease the shock.

Correct the tiller if the limbs arent timed right.

Getting a new bow can work wonders if all else fails.

[ron w]

I have taken hand shock out of a bow, use a heavy arrow, raise the brace, put more heel of your hand into the shot and the most drastic was to change the grip on my belt sander, but it went away! That being said I'm not as sensitive as some to hand shock!

[2fletch]

That's the great part of Tradgang. Lots of good ideas and people who are willing to share them.

I agree with most of what has been said. Steelhead has hit on something that I was looking at. the idea of using a bow quiver to absorb some of that vibration. I'll share what I've seen so far. Maybe latter today I'll take some photos to share.

Late Tuesday night, one of the guys wanted to shoot a bow that looks great, but has a ton of hand shock. After he had shot the bow several times we talked about what causes, and what could be done to alleviate the problem of hand shcck. One of us, and I'm not sure which suggested a bow quiver. It seemed very logical. The quiver would add mass to the riser, and with the rubber cushioning of the limb wrap, it should act as a dampening mechanizm. I grabbed the closest quiver at hand and strapped it hurriedly to the misbehaving bow. Rob shot the bow then and was surprised at how much shock was removed. It was also quieter then before the quiver was added.

I was having acute back pain and it waa about 10:00 pm, so I haven't shot the bow since the quiver was added. I can't wait till this lower back pain subsides so that I can repeat this for myself. Has anyone other than Steelhead experienced this with a bow quiver, and are there other ideas that may help?

[smoke1953]

"It was a static recurve with lots of nice woods."

I think it's the "static" electricity causing the hand shock. Need any more advice I'm there for ya.

[2fletch]

Good point Smoke1953. I'm going to post photos of the bow to see if there are any sparks.
 

 

 
The riser is short, and the tips might be a little bit weighty. I might consider grinding the tips some to reduce the weight. I just hate to mess with someone else's really nice project. Any ideas are welcome.

[Bjorn]

That is a beautiful bow; I would play with the brace, string type, and arrow weight a lot before taking a sander to the bow.

[Turkeys Fear Me]

Very pretty bow but it look like a LOT of extra weight in the limb tips.

I'm guessing that's where your shock is coming from.

[Steelhead]

I have had a static tipped recurves similar to that werent bad at all with handshock.A Red Chavez and an Assyrian recurve all wood laminated bow by  Javaman Greg Coffey.Texas Commanche was also similar in the tip style and the Grummsley recurve.Aso a Palouse recurve as weell as the Palouse longbow.They look great!

Great looking bow!

[sawtoothscream]

my new bow had some shock to it when i first shot it. i added cat whiskers and played around with the brace hieght until it felt good. now the shock it has isnt bad at all and i really dont notice it. took a little playing around though.

if it is FF string approved give that a shot

[2fletch]

Bjorn, you are right. I want to try a lot of things before going to the sander. I look at it like a project to learn from.

One of the things that can cause shock is if one limb reacts quicker than the other. If that were the case then I wonder what would happen if you strapped the quiver on the quicker limb slightly off the fadeout, out onto the working area? (Notice I said "slightly".)

Another question is whether the bow quiver improving the hand shock was a result of the added mass weight to the riser, or because of the dampening effect of the rubber pads on the straps?
Anyone have an opinion on that?