I read on here where somebody best said it where it made sense. Go out side and throw a baseball as hard as you can, and then with the same might throw your arm with no baseball in it. Something as light as a baseball can save your arm and shoulder, just like something as light as an arrow can save your bow.

Not my analogy, but I read it on this sight and it makes sense.

 

great analogy,

a dry fire can occur even when the bow isn't fully drawn

 

As I understand it the arrow poses resistance to the force of the energy released when the string is released acting as a sort of brake.

Rather like throwing a base ball. If you used the same action and force in a throwing motion without the ball as you would if you were throwing a ball you would risk damage to the throwing arm, elbow, etc. Try it.

Course I may not know a dang thing about this subject but it deserved at least one reply. :wink:

 

The force that your bow/limbs creates at full draw needs somewhere to go when you release the string. The arrow absorbs a large portion of that energy.Without the arrow you are taking a chance at damaging your bow.

 

Your bow will produce and exspell 100% energy. If there isn't an arrow to absorb the energy, it goes back into the bow and causes damage. An arrow will absorb 70-80 precent of the energy. If you have noticed, a lighter arrow goes faster than a heavy one because it takes the bow less effort to move it. That's why ibo has a 5 grain per pound rule to protect archers and their equipment.

 

try doin 'neutral drops' with your car in the driveway.

 

i'm wondering if you can use a battery as an analogy, say the bow is the battery + wire, and the arrow is the ligthbulb. when you connect the light, the battery is fine... but if you short circuit the battery, you're going to get a lot of problems really soon...

 

or just the fact of swinging out of your shoes at a baseball or softball. sure makes a difference when you hit that tiny ball as opposed to swing and a miss.

better yet ask charlie brown about kicking that stupid football....how he falls for it everytime i have yet to figure out.

 

The weight of the arrow saves your bow because the bow manuf. says you have to shoot a arrow at 5grains per pound of draw weight. Less your bow may blow and warranty is void. You need so much weight and something there to help guide your string so it does not throw it self of the cams for one thing witch will cause the cables to slap so hard when the limbs pop outward and colasp and or bend cams and split and or break limbs and even bend pins and bust strings and cables. Hey you just do not do it. Do not believe it try it on your own bow.

 

It's BAD....VERY BAD!!!!!:wink:

 

Dry firing is normally a problem with older men like.........OOOOps:embara:I bad.....thought I was in MV for a moment. Sorry, back to the topic.

 

Its all about dissapating energy, that little arrow shaft absorbs a ton of it. Without it there something else has to take its place. A dry fire sends all that energy into areas that can take it, but not that much usually in one blow! One dry fire it might be o.k, several in a row might damage it enough to not allow another pull back!

 

Bingo!!! we have a winner. Its all about physics. Potential energy stored in a bow when drawn is transfered to the arrow as kinetic energy when shot. Some of that energy is maintained in the bow (which is fine) and dissipated through the bow and stabilizer, shock suppressors etc. Also, when an arrow is too lite not enough energy is tranfered into the arrow and the bow has to absord more energy which can also damage the bow.

 

Just to make things a little more confusing you can dry fire a bow with an arrow thats to light also.

 

the law of conservation of energy: energy is neither created nor destroyed so the potential energy stored in the limbs of your bow at full draw is transfered to your arrow as kinetic energy (energy of a moving body) upon release. If the arrow wasnt present then that energy would stabalize through the mass of your bows components aka cause a lot of damage

 

great explanations guys, couldn't have said it better myself!

 

Yep . . the basic principal of how a bow works is energy (which is neither created nor destroyed) is transferred from you muscles, into the limbs of the bow, and then to the arrow. Minus the arrow the energy is scrubbed off from the bow by severe and sudden movement of all the bow's parts. The end result is usually not good.

 

But the mass of the string is so small. Even moving at 300+ feet per second, how much energy could it have relative to the metal pins and cams or the composit bow limbs?