One of the advantages WTSC has in target shooting is that between Matt and Geoff, we have a wealth of knowlege and experience in the sport available right there on the range. A sort of support network I suppose. We’re not there yet with the archery and we’re working as hard as we can on it, but the occasional gaffes and goofs are showing up. To me, as usual 😀
For example, I have a 70″ bow. So, when we took the riser and limbs and string out of the box and put it all together and strung it, we figured that’s what a 70″ bow looks like. The limbs say 70″, and the string says 70″. Just so you know I’m not kidding on that one:
Thing is, when I went down to Dublin Archers last night (who do have that support network in place), someone noticed the setup and pointed out (thankfully) that a bracing height of 11″-12″ is not normal, and that the string (despite the packaging) is actually a 68″ string. So I was busily damaging my limbs for the past few months and none of us noticed. (Do I need to mention we’re now checking all the other club bows just in case?).
And it didn’t help either that I’d followed some hints on how to fletch mylar vanes, and the last tip was to dip them in flour so that excess adhesive didn’t get the arrows stuck to each other in the tube. Which no-one had ever heard of before and which doesn’t do much good for your fletchings, it turns out.
Oh, and the colour’s a bad idea too – finding the fletches in the grass would be impossible (but I figured that that didn’t matter when I ordered them because if they’ve torn off, I thought they’d be so damaged that you wouldn’t try to refletch with them); but what I didn’t know was that finding black arrows without brightly coloured fletches is difficult in grass if you miss the boss.
Just not one of my better evenings I think.
Still, on the plus side, we’ve learnt a lot, the mistakes are recoverable from quite easily, no-one’s been hurt, and as initial gaffes go, it’s not as bad as shooting yourself in the backside 😀