[kegan]

No, before any one tells you otherwise. There MAY be a bit of sting pinch, but at 58"-60" drawn to around 28", I haven't experienced it. Some say they are less stable, but a short longbow will still be a bit more stable than a recurve because the weight is in the limbs, not the handle. I have built quite a few, and they are fine, nothing wrong, and a real pleasure to hunt with. I just finished up a 61" long sinewed D bow that shoots better than any of my bows or my brother's laminate long bow and recurve.

 

[kegan]

I'd agree with you about long bows being smoother but I think your analogy is perhaps a bit off. With limb design you want the least mass in the limbs possible for the energy storage and torsion resistance your design requires. This is one of the design advantages of the ACS limbs--they are very light and have low mass at the tips. A balance pole is the opposite, you want a high moment of inertia so you put a lot of mass at the ends of a long pole--the opposite of what you want in a limb.

Less mass at the tips is good, allows you to use heavier arrows and reduces hand shock, that being said though, having all the weight in the riser, with no weight in the limbs, leads to the same problem as with recurves- "spinning". I have not heard of any one else talk of it, but I've found that the stability of the bow comes from heavy limbs and a light riser, at least compared to a modern recurve. Then again, I shoot selfbows and such. Such bows are superior to manufactured glass bows in that they can be built short, but still stable, without pinch from a 55" bow, and other "enomilies" in the modern trad archery world:zip:. Guess I'm done then.

 

[kegan]

Yup...Kegan, I think you've got the pinch and stability thing backwards. The trick is building a LONG heavily R/D bow that's stable and can perform with the best...

That's where the Adcock ACS CX shines, while a burner like the Centaur has limitations.

As for the finger pinch...it's all about string angle. Static tips allow you to get a larger angle with a shorter bow.

Heavily R/D are not the stablest of bows. Actually, if you want stability, a defelxed bow is tops. That's why a straight bow with some string follow is inherintly more accurrate than a reflexed or "curved bows". Not that I'm knocking curved bows, they are wicked perfromers, but in the eyes of stability, there just not tops.

And you just proved what I'm saying correct about stability. You say a LONG bow... which means more weight, or the prevention of "spinning". If you were to hold a recurve(60"), laminated longbow (66"), long selfbow(66"), and short selfbow(60") in your hand and tried to spin it by twisting your wrist, the long selfbow would be the hardest, the short selfbow would be second. The recurve would swing around like mad. I've done this test several times last June while trying to design some good hunting bows, hence my new love of short D bows. The extra weight in the limbs (especially of narrow thick bows of dense woods) is harder to spin. Selfbows just weight more in the limbs, giving them a stability at shorter lengths that you can't understand if you've only shot modern bows. That's also why a long selfbow is one of the best hunting weapons there is.

As for finger pinch, that really deals more with the person and string material as much as the bow. How far are you drawing the bow? Does your draw length really match that bows design? Is the string made of thin material or is it something thick? I've used stretched paracord for almost all of my bow strings and it is decent stuff, nice and easy on your fingers, and I shoot bare fingered.

A short all wood bow is not unstable. It may not be as stable as a similiar longbow, but it is not unstable. This may be why we're hitting a snag, because we're comparing apples and oranges here. A selfbow is a different creature than a molded fiberglass backed bow. Their properties and characteristics differ greatly.

If you built your selfbows, you will get an odd unerstanding of what the wood can do and how it does it, something a fiberglass bow will never accomplish, even if you build it yourself.

Darn, guess I wasn't done