KuRingGai Bowmen Newsletter December 1999
		In this issue: Christmas Dinner Committee Meeting Treasurers Report Recorders Report Results Compound Tuning Thank You and Congratulations Fred Herbert and Country of Cumberland Clout Welcome To New Members Merry Christmas For Sale The Answers The Questions Shooting Calendar
Club Christmas Dinner Saturday 11th December at 7.30 p.m.
Compound Tuning Making sense of the paper test...
Fred Herbert and Country of Cumberland Clout Upon waking on Sunday it....
Selling, buying? See our classified section for all of your needs.

Club Christmas Dinner Saturday 11th December at 7.30 p.m. Shardon Lebanese Restaurant 371a Darling Street, Balmain Cost: Approx. $27.00 per head RSVP Nick Horley 5th December 1999

Committee Meeting 28th November 1999

• AGM: The Committee looked at the date for the next years AGM but decided that the date would be decided on in January 2000.
• Joining Fee of $15.00: The committee discussed the need for the $15.00 joining fee that all new members currently pay. It was felt that the fee should stay as it covers the cost of initially providing facilities that all members use, such as tea and coffee, hot water, club house, fridge and microwave whilst the person remains a member of the club.
• Club booklet: Gregory reported that the booklet was finished but had made a mistake and brought the wrong one to the meeting. The committee felt that they could accept the booklet another week without the need for a meeting to accept it.
• GST: The committee has some concern over the effect that the GST will have on our operation. Gregory will talk to the Dept. of Fair Trading and the ATO to see if there is an information pack available. Helen had printed some information from the ATO's Web Page, but felt that the information was a little bit vague.
• KGB's Web Site: Gregory has approached the committee about the content of the clubs web page, asking for a development committee to assist in determining content and layout. Nick and Helen have offered to help.

Treasurers Report 27th November 1999

Treasurer's report not disclosed here.

Recorders Report
12th September 1999 to 20th November 1999

Due to the recent changes within the club executive I have accepted the position of recorder. As I have only held this position for 3 weeks, I will only report on results obtained in that period. There has been a lot of paperwork to browse through, there may be some errors in this report but things will get better as I become more familiar with the system.

Roger Klooster

Compound Tuning
Making sense of the paper test

Preparation

As most of us with a compound would appreciate, tuning a compound is much more complex than first thought; certainly more complex than a recurve for instance. Not only do you have centre shot, tiller and nocking point to deal with, but there is also rest tension, wheel timing and clearance problems to contend with as well.

A good starting point for compound tuning is carrying out a paper test. This allows you to get a good idea as to the performance of the arrow as it leaves the bow. To carry out a paper test it is necessary to have a frame on which you can attach a sheet of paper securely and shoot through at close range. Then depending on the tear the arrow leaves in the paper will depend on how you then adjust the bow.

However not all of our shooting problems are associated with our equipment; as Chris Jones from Merlin Bows puts it our bows could be just suffering from thrombosis - a clot behind the string!!! You must remember that no amount of tuning is going to improve your scores if your form is inconsistent or your sight isn't in the ten ring.

Before carrying out a paper test you must make some checks and adjustments to your equipment.Your tiller and nicking Point must be set correctly or your rest will interfere with your arrow flight. Set you tiller to level and then adjust your nocking Point so that it is set roughly square to 3/8" above square. This will give you a rough setting to work from.

After adjusting your nocking point check to see where your centre shot is. We want to start with a centre shot that is in perfect alignment with the string. Make sure though that you check the position of centre on you bow as must compound true centre is slightly left of dead centre (for right handed bows) due to the cam centre on the limb. Now we are at the stage where we can start to carry out some paper tests and shoot some arrows.

With the paper test, what we want to achieve is an indication of how the arrow is leaving the bow. We will then make some changes to the bow and equipment according to the tears that the arrow leaves in the paper. To start with you will want to shoot arrows from about stabiliser distance away from the paper.

The Vertical Tear.

This is one of the easiest to correct, but there are a number of things that could be causing it. Mainly the vertical tear will be a high nock tear, but if you get a low nock tear this will only be caused if you have a drop away rest and the nocking point is too low.

Firstly try adjusting your nocking point lower. This will be the most common cause of a high nock tear. However you might also find that the nocking point could be too low, bouncing off the rest and tearing high. Make some nocking point adjustments and then carry out another test and see what happens; if the changes you have just made do not entirely correct the problem, either make some further adjustments to your nocking point or try some more of the options below.

Check the tension of the launcher that you are using. The arrow should be fully supported at full draw so that the rest does not move if you lightly touch the arrow.

If you have a drop-away style rest that uses a length of rubber or cord, make sure that the rest comes to full height when you reach full draw, and that 2-3" forward of full draw the rest is still at full height; however the rest must fall away forward of this point. If the rest does not fall away then the cord or rubber is too tight and needs to be loosened or lengthened.

If none of these options work the next thing that you need to check for is fletch contact with the bow or rest. The best way to check this is to spay the arrow with a dry powder, foot powder is the most common spray used for this purpose. After you shoot the next few arrows check for marks in the powder. If there are marks on the arrow, look at the amount of rest that is touching the arrow and adjust your rest accordingly. If on the other hand there is fletch contact, you may simply need to rotate your nocks. You can also check for fletch contact by shooting a bare shaft through the paper. If the paper tear is better with the bare shaft then there is a good chance there is fletch contact.

If none of these adjustments makes any difference to you vertical tear,. the only thing left is to look at wheel timing. If one wheel rotates ahead of the other, then you will get a vertical tear. A top wheel advance will cause a nock high tear, but a bottom wheel advance may also tear nock high as the arrow may bounce off the rest.

Horizontal tear.

Unfortunately horizontal tears are somewhat more difficult to correct than vertical tears as they tend to show up a lot more inconsistencies in the archers form. These inconsistencies are generally caused by torquing the bow, which by the nature of compounds, is very easy to do and very very common.

The general rule for a right handed archer is that a right tear shows a stiff arrow and left tear a weak one. however, just changing arrows rarely solves the problem. Using the correct spine arrow is essential of course, but using arrows one or even two sizes either side of the chart will still give you pretty good tears. Spine selection becomes more noticeable when you are shooting for groups. Obviously this is important as good grouping is what we are aiming for.

Generally you will find that small adjustments to the centre shot will make little difference to horizontal paper tears. Assuming that is that the rest was originally aligned with the centre of the string. Because release aids have little effect on the travel of the string, there is little or no archers paradox induced that needs to be accommodated for and therefore centre shot will remain roughly dead centre.

More often than not sideways tears come down to talk. Firstly you need to look at the cable guard. You can reduce the amount of torque that is applied by the cable guard by changing the rake on the bar so that there is less clearance. However you need to check that by doing the there is no clearance problems created.

The other way that torque can be transferred to the bow is via the bow hand. There are various things that you can do to try to prevent this. Firstly you can try to relax your fingers or change the position your hand is on the bow. However you must choose a position that is comfortable and one that is repeatable from shot to shot.

You might find that your best option is to reduce the size of the grip. One that is narrow is less likely to create torque problems than one that is thicker; with a narrow one there is less of your hand on the bow.

If none of these changes make any difference, the next step is to look at the way that you are anchoring. If you are dragging the string to the side when you are anchoring, upon release you will cause the string to travel diagonally and induce archers paradox. This is impossible to tune out and is very easy to do because of the light weights that you are dealing with at anchor with compound bows.

To demonstrate what I mean, hold the bow as you would normally at full draw, then move the string left and right with the drawing hand. By moving the string at all, even slightly you will cause the problem that I have just described. Obviously the only way to correct this is to change the way you anchor and draw the bow, so that there is no sideways movement upon drawing the string.

The end result

Once you have managed to achieve the perfect bullet hole, you can be sure that your arrows are leaving the bow cleanly. However this is not the end of your tuning. It is now necessary to fine tune your bow by tuning for groups. This is done by making tiny adjustments to the things mentioned above at short distances, then when happy with the groups achieved, increasing the distance and again making small adjustments. However you must remember to be realistic in what results you are expecting.

Based on an article from The Glade by Chris Jones - Merlin Bows
Gregory Rowell

Thank You and Congratulations.

Congratulations Abraham for your fantastic performance in winning the Junior Boys Compound Division in the State Field Championships Recently.

Congratulations to Andrew Chessher for his qualifying proficiency score at 30m.

As some of you may be aware, Janice Hilliard our recent Secretary, has had to resign due to employment and physical limitations. So on behalf of the Committee and the members of KuRingGai Bowmen, I would like to thank Janice for all of the good work that she has done for us over recent years. - Thanks Janice!!!

Fortunately we have been lucky enough to be able to pass on this job to another of our members who was willing to take on this most difficult of roles. Thank you and welcome to Helen Moore for taking on the role of Secretary for KuRingGai Bowmen.

Our recorder, Donelle Wilton-Smith, is also leaving us and moving to the Blue Mountains. So a thank you to her from the Committee and the members of KuRingGai Bowmen for the work that she has done for this club both as recorder and the other duties that she has carried out over the years for this club.

We have again been lucky enough to be able to find a replacement for Donelle. Roger Klooster has kindly offered to take over from Donelle as club recorder. Thanks Roger we look forward to your contributions.

But wait there is more.....

Roger Klooster has constructed and donated a device for assisting our recurvers string their bows. This device is attached to the wall and can be used by all archers. Thank you Roger this will certainly make our lives easier, particularly at the end of a long day.

Fred Herbert and Country of Cumberland Clout - 1st October 1999.

Upon waking on Sunday it appeared at first glance that the weather which was so inclement the day before had somewhat abated and to continue preparation for the clout would not be in vain. Oh so how easily fooled we were.

Lulled into this false sense of security 53 archers, out of seventy entrants, from as far as Newcastle, Bathurst and Wollongong turned up for a very wet day.

The constant rain all morning plus the large puddles underfoot, ensured no part of the body escaped saturation. Most archers were using mirrors and if they weren't fogged up they continually had water on them making it very difficult to see at all, let alone clearly.

However in the afternoon the rain became more sporadic and the sun even tried to poke through increasing the humidity. With the water resistant clothing that we had on, the humidity increased to an uncomfortable level.

However at the end of the day there was to be a pleasant surprise in store for the three of us. We had shot well enough to take out the Fred Herbert Memorial Cup for seniors.

Allan McVicar was the most outstanding of the three of us, shooting a record for the day of 619 points, proving that his new bow really was worthwhile. Allan also came 1st in his division, as did Cora Arnold coming 1st in her division; while I dragged the chain and managed only second place.

David Boyd

[Not that second place is anything to be ashamed of. Fantastic effort! Congratulations to Cora, Allan and David!!! GR]

Welcome to new Members David Henthorn Julie MacDougal

Have a Merry Christmas and a Safe and Happy New Year.

For Sale

1. A minimum order will need to be made before these will be available (I think). Prices will depend on order size.
   
2. These prices are approximate only.
   (See the secretary or recorder for confirmation of prices and availability of goods.)

"The Answers" To the previous questions...

Q: What is a Dutchman?

A: A Dutchman is a good wood set into a bow or arrow where a fault has been excised to fill a crack.

Q: What is a Crest?

A: Cresting is found near the feathers on an arrow and is used for identifying arrows. It used to be made of painted rings.

"The Questions" From the Glade

Q: What is an Ell?

Q: What is a finger?
      (and no it is not something you draw the string back with)