Building a better arrow

[Greg Krause]

I have been shooting 29" Beeman MFX 500's with a 125 grain head out of my 49# Super Shrew longbow. the spine out perfect and shoot like darts. as much as i like them I wanted to get a heavier arrow with higher FOC for hunting. It should penetrate better and give me some more stability helping in accuracy. I fletched up a few 29" MFX 400's with a 100 grain insert and 125 grain head. Man these things fly great and hit hard! I had 3 fletched a few that werent yet, so i figured i would see how the bare shaft flew. It was right with the fletches arrows out to 15yds.......I didn't have time to move back any farther but i really don't need to. the fletched shafts were dropping right into the kill zone on my target at 30yds everytime!
I want to weigh the new arrows soon and see what they are the old ones were 430 grains

With any luck I'll get to "test" them for real on Saturday on a nice fat CT whitetail!

[Buckshot06]

Jan 20, 2009 18:12:03 GMT -5 Greg Krause said:

With any luck I'll get to "test" them for real on Saturday on a nice fat CT whitetail!

Post the damage!!

I wish you luck as if you need it ;D ;D ;D

[easternhunter]

Jan 20, 2009 18:12:03 GMT -5 Greg Krause said:

I have been shooting 29" Beeman MFX 500's with a 125 grain head out of my 49# Super Shrew longbow. the spine out perfect and shoot like darts. as much as i like them I wanted to get a heavier arrow with higher FOC for hunting. It should penetrate better and give me some more stability helping in accuracy. I fletched up a few 29" MFX 400's with a 100 grain insert and 125 grain head. Man these things fly great and hit hard! I had 3 fletched a few that werent yet, so i figured i would see how the bare shaft flew. It was right with the fletches arrows out to 15yds.......I didn't have time to move back any farther but i really don't need to. the fletched shafts were dropping right into the kill zone on my target at 30yds everytime!
I want to weigh the new arrows soon and see what they are the old ones were 430 grains

With any luck I'll get to "test" them for real on Saturday on a nice fat CT whitetail!

Greg, interesting because I'm shooting 52# recurve and a 54# longbow with the same shaft with 200 grains on the front with the standard insert at 29.75"(maybe a bit long but they fly good) with 3 - 5" shields.....I got a weight of 540-545gr. then I stuffed 60gr. worth of whipper line inside...just folded it over so it would hold tighter. Now, I got 600gr. arrows. And you're right, they do hit hard!!!

[smj]

I've done the same thing when building arrows for my longbows. What I like about adding weight in the tip, heavy inserts or screw-on weights to the back of the insert, is that you can get by with a heavier, stiffer, arrow to begin with. The added weight to the tip effectively softens the spine a bit and can let you get by with an arrow that would otherwise bounce off to the left! (Assume here a right handed shooter.) Although, based on draw weight and efficiency, eventually the arrow becomes so heavy that it is no longer fun to shoot past 15 to 20 yards! They do pack some "thump" when they hit the target! I prefer to 4-fletch my arrows (shield cut), but on most of my bows I find the 3-fletch seems to shoot a bit more forgivingly. (I think it has to do with the 90 verses 120 degree fletching angles. The 4-fletch bounce harder due to the tighter angle.)

Good luck on the hunt! Let us know how it goes!!!

[akdd]

You should be right at 525 grains.