Went out to WTSC to finally get to shoot the new kit on the bow this weekend, after finally getting two new 70″ (yes, I checked 😀 ) strings for the bow. 
Hooray for the right bracing height!
And Don and Geoff got us a new straw boss, so Don can’t shoot straight through it anymore 🙂
Tara Purcell and Sarah Deegan came out for the Sunday afternoon session and helped enormously by showing us how stuff is supposed to be done and giving the club the quick once-over to see if there were any major things that we’d have to fix (the left side of the 30m field may need a bit in the way of netting but apart from that we seem okay enough to start with). Sarah then spent a fair bit of time helping me get set up with the new bow, losing the brass nocking points in favour of a served nocking ping (hurrah for more arrow speed), and Tara spent some time shooting down my arrows before they arrived at the target 😀 (not kidding, we heard the arrows hit off one another before they hit the boss).
Thing was, of course, that I wasn’t drawing properly. It’s okay out to the anchor point, but at that stage I was conciously loosing the arrow – what I was supposed to have been doing was continuing to bring my scapulae together until they almost touched, and the pressure would eventually loose the arrow on its own. So I spent a while trying to do that and I think I’ve managed to get a half-assed beginners version of this to work. However, it’s just become obvious just how far away good technique actually is. Which is nice, actually, I was thinking that stuff was seeming way too easy compared to progression in shooting. Now I feel like I actually know just how far I have to go to get to a reasonable standard. Of course my shoulders feel like I just had my arms ripped out by a large primate and my back is still tense the following day and I feel as awkward as I think it’s possible for me to feel, but other than that it was great ! 🙂
First, however, I need to refletch every last one of my arrows. The whole flour thing really messed them up (not to mention the damage from shooting through the clicker once or twice and Tara shooting through my arrow once :D):
So it’s back to retail therapy and ordering a fletching jig, more vanes, some spare nocks (just in case) and I’m pondering wraps because I’ve tried writing my name on the arrows using every gold/silver pen I could find and nothing sticks – 12 hours of drying later, they still just wipe off without effort. Maybe just biting the bullet and getting some standard socx wraps with my name preprinted on them would be the better solution.
I’ve also got some repair work on the riser itself to do – the bushing for the button has come loose completely. Time to get out the wood glue:
