Choosing The Right Bow - Compound Bow Setup Part 1

Hello, I'm Liam Grimwood. I currently compete on the FITA World Cup circuit and I'm going to show you some of the processes that I go through in order to set my compound bow up. Also, we're going to be joined by my fellow GBT member, Neil Wakelin, and he's going to share with us some of his thoughts and ideas on bow setup. Choosing and ordering the right bow for you. This is a really difficult process for a lot of people because there's so many makes and models out there. There's a lot of manufacturers and they're all making really great bows at the moment. So where do you start? Well, first of all, there's five main categories that you've got to address when looking at which bow to choose. The first one is axle to axle length. That's the distance from this axle to this axle. Now that can be anywhere between 30 inches and 45 inches and that measurement is going to make a great difference to how the bow feels, how it reacts and everything like that. Generally, it's assumed that the longer axle bows tend to hold a little steadier on the target and that the shorter bows are maybe slightly more erratic. I've found that this isn't always the case and I feel it's one of those things that you need to try and just see what feels comfortable for you. Axle length is a lot about comfort. It not only affects the way the bow holds but it also affects the string angle. Now the string angle is the angle at which the string leaves the wheel and leaves the camp to create a triangle here. That then creates this angle here in your face. Now if you have a long axle bow then the string angle is going to be steep so therefore the peep sight is going to be nice and close to your eye. If you have a short angle bow then the peep angle is going to be shallow and therefore the peep is going to be a distance away from your face which can make it more difficult to aim with. The next factor to consider when selecting a bow is brace height. Now that's the distance from the string to the throat of the grip. The brace height governs how long the arrow stays in contact with the string for. Now if you had a long brace height like eight or nine inches then the arrow is going to leave the string a lot sooner than if you had a six inch brace height which would finish around here. Therefore if it's a shorter brace height the arrow has been in contact with the string longer and therefore goes faster. Now many bows with around a six inch brace height can reach speeds of up to 330 feet per second. If you've got a longer brace height like an eight inch brace height then the speed is going to be a lot less maybe more around 300 or 290 feet per second. So the other factor you've got to consider is that the longer the arrow stays on the string the more critical the bow is. So in my opinion it's good to find somewhere in the middle where you can get the speed but you can also get the forgiveness out of it. And the next thing to consider when selecting a bow is the cam system that you're going to choose. This first cam system that we're going to look at is the single cam system. Now this uses one string and one cable and only has one cam. At the top of the bow is an idler wheel. Now that's not used for any let-off purposes that's simply to act as a slave to the bottom cam. Single cam systems are generally thought of to be a lot easier to tune than any other type of cam system. They also give a really good solid level knock travel which means that the arrow leaves the bow very straight and better than any other cam system I've ever used. The next cam system we're going to look at is a hybrid cam system. Now an example of this is the cam and a half system. Now this is a totally different system to the single cam that we looked at earlier. This works on basically very very similar to the old two cam system. Now it has advantages and disadvantages compared to the other one. For the same geometry bow with the hybrid cam system you can get a lot more speed and a lot of people believe accuracy. However if the cams come out of time it can really drastically decrease the performance of the bow which you obviously don't get with the single cam system. On the other hand the hybrid cam system such as this one does have an adjustable jaw length range of two and a half inches which means that if you're not entirely sure about your jaw length then you're able to change it whenever you want whereas with the other cam system it is fixed so in order to change the jaw length you would have to get a whole new cam for it. The next step we need to consider is the geometry of the riser. Now a riser such as this one is what's known as reflex as the riser actually comes back towards the string as it goes down. Now a deflex riser actually moves out away from the string such as this bow here which is a deflex bow. Now you'll notice on this one here that where the riser starts at the top it actually bends away from the string as it comes down. Now on a bow like this such as a deflex one you've generally got a larger brace height which is the distance from there to there than you would on a normal reflex bow. Now this generally creates more forgiveness however it does sacrifice speed so it's a compromise you've got to find something that's forgiving but also has the speed that you need for your longest distance. The other thing you need to consider when selecting your bow is let off. Now let me give you an example of this if you had a bow with a 60 pound peak weight and it had 50 percent let off you'd therefore be holding 30 pounds at full jaw. Now on most modern bows let off varies between 50 percent and 85 percent. Now in my opinion I wouldn't recommend going over 75 percent as in that sort of situation as described before holding anything less than 15 pounds just wouldn't be enough as your bow would be moving all over the place in wind and also when you're nervous so I'd say try and stay below 70 percent in terms of let off. So hopefully that's given you some sort of insight into the factors you need to consider when choosing a bow but at the end of the day the advice I would give would be to go to your local pro shop and ask them for advice if you've got any questions or queries about things like that. Now would be a good time to introduce to you my fellow British team member Neil Wakelin and he's going to explain some of the choices he made when selecting his bow. Thank you Liam. This is my bow which is a 41 inch axle bow. I've chosen 41 inch through previous experience. I know 41 inch is the right axle length for me giving the right string angle so I can draw the bow back and where the string comes into my face at a comfortable anchor point and touches my nose I can get to that anchor point in a nice simple draw without moving my head. For me that's very important. My bow has a seven inch brace height. This is a sensible compromise between speed and accuracy. The cam system on my bow is what's known as a hybrid cam system. This has the advantage over a twin cam as the timing is not so critical. We'll talk through timing later in this dvd. The let off on this cam is 65 percent. Again I agree with Liam that's a sensible choice leaving me a reasonable holding weight on my release aid. That's the main criteria I look for in a bow. The axle length, the brace height, the cam type and the let off. Now I'll pass you back to Liam who'll talk through his bow choice. The bow which I choose for competition is this one. Now it's got a 38 inch axle to axle which gives me a really comfortable string angle on my face. It means that I can get my anchor point really comfortable with the peep still being nice and close to my eye so I can see. It's also got an average seven inch brace height which means that it's got the speed as it's doing around 310 feet per second IBO but at the same time the brace height's big enough where it's still relatively forgiving. This bow also features the single cam system which I've found to be the easiest to tune as it's not entirely critical exactly where the cam is positioned unlike some of the other systems available. Also this cam system gives me the best knock travel. What I mean by this is that when the bow is actually fired the knock actually travels straighter out of the bow than any of the other systems available. It also features a 65 percent let off which falls well within my range that I stated earlier. This means I've got enough holding weight that I'm not going to be blown around too much when the weather's bad but it also means that it's not so heavy that after a full day's shooting I'm really tired. That's why I choose this bow and that's why I take this one to the Feet of World Cups with me.