Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm joined by my good friend Bill Vanderhyden. He's back
Speaker 1: on the show. He is the founder and owner of
Speaker 1: Ironwill Broadheads. I like him. He's an engineer, and because
Speaker 1: of that, I love that he spends a lot of
Speaker 1: time and his energy. You're researching what works, why it works,
Speaker 1: can it be improved on? You know all that stuff
Speaker 1: that us engineers kind of end up nerding out on.
Speaker 1: I find cool and I feel that if I can
Speaker 1: make that connection from the engineering side back to the
Speaker 1: hunting side and then kind of figure out how that
Speaker 1: works with real world results. Right, Like one thing, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure Bill can attest to this, Like you get
Speaker 1: taught in school or in college, you know, everything out
Speaker 1: of this book is cookie cutter. But then they had
Speaker 1: some professors always say like, don't let your studies or
Speaker 1: your book trump what happens out in the real world. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's this thing as an engineer where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: all this this book tells us all these cookie cutter solutions,
Speaker 1: but yet take what's happening out in the real world
Speaker 1: over all that. So in hopes today we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about broadheads, arrows, flight, all that, and then I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna ask Bill a lot of questions on like,
Speaker 1: this is what the science says or this is what
Speaker 1: the engineering or the physics say. Have you found that's
Speaker 1: what works out in the field, and then you know,
Speaker 1: how has that translated to real world results? So I'm
Speaker 1: excited about this one. We've had Bill on the podcast
Speaker 1: I believe once, if not twice before and always enjoy
Speaker 1: our conversation. So welcome to the show. Bill.
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks Jason, thanks for having me on. Yeah, looking
Speaker 2: forward to the discussion today.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, so last time we touched on it,
Speaker 1: I think you were a year through the study at
Speaker 1: the University of Colorado. You've been kind of heading that up.
Speaker 1: Can you kind of give us an update on that.
Speaker 1: I know you were looking at you know, arrows, weights, veins,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, drag, wind drift kind of it's
Speaker 1: a it's a big question, but if you can maybe
Speaker 1: just kind of get us a breakdown on what's come
Speaker 1: out of that study in the second year or any
Speaker 1: new updates and and and really how it affects us
Speaker 1: as a hunter choosing broadheads, arrow vane set ups. You
Speaker 1: know anything that really matters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And the reason for this study is, you know,
Speaker 2: for ball hunting, there's really two things that are very important,
Speaker 2: maybe equally important. That's good erowflight getting to the animal,
Speaker 2: and then penetration through the animal once you get there.
Speaker 2: And I feel like there's there hasn't been good scientific
Speaker 2: studies there has been on the target archery side, there's good,
Speaker 2: there's good papers and research there, but not so much
Speaker 2: when you put a broadhead on the front. That aeroflight's
Speaker 2: much different. And then also you know, trying to maximize
Speaker 2: that momentum in a straight line through the animal and
Speaker 2: have low force to penetrate all that is also very
Speaker 2: important on the on the hunting side. You know, So
Speaker 2: I spent a lot of years developing a broadhead to
Speaker 2: get max penetrations through an animal. But I felt like
Speaker 2: it was that the aerow flight side was kind of
Speaker 2: missing at least, you know, there's a lot of anecdotal
Speaker 2: evidence out there. You know, I tried this and this happened,
Speaker 2: but there's not good engineering experiments. Like you know, as
Speaker 2: an engineer, you know that when you do it, you
Speaker 2: set up an experiment. As an engineer, you do you know,
Speaker 2: lots of repeats, lots you know, you set it up
Speaker 2: in such a way so that you can look at
Speaker 2: the variability and then really make statistically significant decisions there
Speaker 2: on one design point maybe better than another. So I
Speaker 2: knew there was a lot of opportunity there for improvement.
Speaker 2: And I've been a adjunct instructor of mechanical engineering at
Speaker 2: the University of Colorado for several years as one of
Speaker 2: the faculty directors for the Senior Design Project class. So
Speaker 2: the last two years I sponsored, my company sponsored the
Speaker 2: projects and I directed them, really focusing on improving aeroflight
Speaker 2: for bohuney, you know, improving aeroflight with fixed Blaye broadheads
Speaker 2: on the front. And this involved a lot of computer modeling,
Speaker 2: you know, fluidynamic modeling of full arrows with broadheads on
Speaker 2: the front, veins on the back, and you know, how
Speaker 2: do they act in flight when they're going, you know,
Speaker 2: going straight. Maybe they're tipped a little bit, as if
Speaker 2: your bow is a bit out of tune. And we
Speaker 2: looked at accuracy, stability, drag, spin up, wind drift, and sound.
Speaker 2: So you know, we learned some things about all those
Speaker 2: and just maybe wanted to touch on a number of
Speaker 2: those things that could help people improve their arrowflight for
Speaker 2: bow hunting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Bill, So let me ask a question. And this
Speaker 1: is me not being a mechanical engineer. You're gonna you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this guy's definitely a civil engineer when I start to
Speaker 1: ask these. But you look at things that are built
Speaker 1: to fly. You know, if it's a regular dart, you
Speaker 1: know you got a very sharp point. You look at
Speaker 1: a plane, it's a very sleek point. Wings are on
Speaker 1: the back, you know, all the stabilizings on the back.
Speaker 1: And you look at our our you know, our target
Speaker 1: point arrows once again very sleek on the front. You
Speaker 1: have all your steering on the back. How much or
Speaker 1: maybe you don't have this number, but is my understanding
Speaker 1: is when you start to put you know, a fixed
Speaker 1: blaze or blades out front, you've now got the ability
Speaker 1: for the wind to basically if that thing isn't flying
Speaker 1: perfectly perpendicular or you know, perpendicular to the plane that
Speaker 1: that is traveling, you start to get some side force.
Speaker 1: And that's really what causes these major issues between shooting
Speaker 1: my field point where it's not near as important versus
Speaker 1: now I've got a broadhead that now has the ability
Speaker 1: to steer from the front, the part that should be
Speaker 1: cutting the area or the air is now being pushed
Speaker 1: at on a side, and then it's it's up to
Speaker 1: those veins that to over control. Is that a is
Speaker 1: that a accurate or is there more to it than
Speaker 1: that or is that really what's kind of going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's and that's really the kind of the biggest
Speaker 2: factor is the air stability. So with the field point,
Speaker 2: like you mentioned, with the field point, you know, it's
Speaker 2: very very you know, small streamlined. If you have veins
Speaker 2: on the back of any size nearly any size, the
Speaker 2: arrow becomes very stable. And the problem that often happened
Speaker 2: is when you put a broad head on the front
Speaker 2: and this could be a you know, mechanical broadhead it's
Speaker 2: just you know, has a longer farrell and some exposed blades,
Speaker 2: or maybe a standard broadhead might be a little bit
Speaker 2: more unstable, and then you get to like a very
Speaker 2: large wide blade broadhead, which should be you know, more
Speaker 2: unstable yet and it's that aero stability that then translates
Speaker 2: to accuracy when things aren't perfect. So that was that
Speaker 2: was probably the top factor in the study, is understanding
Speaker 2: how to get better accuracy stability when you have fixed
Speaker 2: blade heads on the front because like you said, if
Speaker 2: the arrow, say aero comes out of your bow and
Speaker 2: it's tipped, you know, tiptail left, you have that airflow
Speaker 2: hitting kind of left side of the arrow and up front,
Speaker 2: you know it's hitting the blades on the left side,
Speaker 2: it's going to want to push it off to the right.
Speaker 2: Your center of mass is kind of the pivot point there.
Speaker 2: The airflow across the left side of the veins on
Speaker 2: the back is going to have some force and you
Speaker 2: know it's technically it's called lift force, but in this
Speaker 2: case it's not up it's just perpendicular to the flow.
Speaker 2: So just for definitions there, force in line with the
Speaker 2: flow is drag drag force, and force perpendicular is a
Speaker 2: lift force. So you've got this lift force at the
Speaker 2: back pushing you know, pushing it back on course or
Speaker 2: restoring it. And that distance from the center of mass
Speaker 2: back to the veins, that distance times of force kind
Speaker 2: of gives you a torque. It's going to rotate it
Speaker 2: back on target. And then at the front that force
Speaker 2: on the blades pushing it off times that lever arm
Speaker 2: to center mask is a toward pushing it off. So yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of the study. We have a couple of
Speaker 2: papers we've published on our website, but it'll talk about
Speaker 2: restoring torque with different vein designs, and you want that
Speaker 2: restoring torque to be high. So if it comes out,
Speaker 2: say tail left, it very quickly straightens it back out,
Speaker 2: points it towards the target, and it greatly improves accuracy.
Speaker 2: And I think that's what's been missing and a lot
Speaker 2: of the reasons I wanted to do the study is
Speaker 2: to show the physics and then the modeling, and then
Speaker 2: also the empirical testing. You know, we've got over twenty
Speaker 2: four hundred shots now out of a shooting machine where
Speaker 2: we've recorded velocity with a lab radar. We've looked at
Speaker 2: with a high speed camera the arrow coming out, spinning
Speaker 2: up and stabilizing, and those are two different things, by
Speaker 2: the way, spin up in stability, and we'll talk about
Speaker 2: that more. But and then also shot over microphones recorded sound.
Speaker 2: But we've got twenty four hundred shots of empirical you know,
Speaker 2: testing to kind of verify the modeling. But yeah, that
Speaker 2: stability is a huge factor for having good accuracy with broadheads.
Speaker 1: A quick question for you, I know, and you'll probably
Speaker 1: correct me. How I assume like an iron will technically
Speaker 1: is a four blade broadhead, but it really has one.
Speaker 1: It's I'm gonna you're probably gonna be like Jason, I
Speaker 1: wish you wouldn't talk about this, but it's basically a
Speaker 1: large two blade broadhead with bleeder blades to make it
Speaker 1: a So with that said, did you guys test other
Speaker 1: manufacturers three blade or four blade heads to see if
Speaker 1: that side force is less because basically you're not pushing
Speaker 1: on one large blade versus like a symmetrical three or
Speaker 1: four blade versus your guys's four blade. If that makes
Speaker 1: any sense, that you do any testing to see if
Speaker 1: if that force is less or or just.
Speaker 2: Some kind of ye, just some kind of screening testing
Speaker 2: early on and and three three blade versus two blade
Speaker 2: side collars. A two blade with bleeders, all right, some
Speaker 2: people might call it a four blade, but yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 2: it doesn't vary. It's a similar issue whether you have uh,
Speaker 2: you know, a two blade, two blade with bleeders, three
Speaker 2: blade or four blade. All of those create some lift
Speaker 2: when there's some angle of attack, you know, when the
Speaker 2: arrow is tipped to the to the airflow. They all
Speaker 2: create some lift and it can it can vary, but
Speaker 2: it's more of it'll you know, the size of it
Speaker 2: lay as a factor. But then also just the the geometry,
Speaker 2: like you know, so I designed iron will broadheads using
Speaker 2: fluidynamic modeling to kind of minimize the drag. You know,
Speaker 2: I want that flow to go out around the blades
Speaker 2: and then come back together, you know. And there's so
Speaker 2: there's bevels in the back edges of the blade and
Speaker 2: it's it's kind of streamlined to minimize drag. And so
Speaker 2: that's there's some three blades that have that have flat
Speaker 2: backs to the blades and also have coming kind of
Speaker 2: some steps down in the feral that have very high
Speaker 2: drag that where this condition is actually worse. They're more
Speaker 2: unstable from that. So it's hard to say a two
Speaker 2: blade versus a three blade and to make like general
Speaker 2: statements like that. It more depends on the geometry and
Speaker 2: the drag of the broadhead itself, and that's very geometry depended.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then recovery torque does it is it better?
Speaker 1: Do you recover quicker on like a longer arrow, getting
Speaker 1: like the mass out front and your your veins, you know,
Speaker 1: further back, or is a shorter arrow recover faster, Not
Speaker 1: that it really matters, you're kind of stuck with your
Speaker 1: own arrow. I was just curious if you've found that
Speaker 1: like a longer arrow recovers quicker or slower.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, you know, increasing FOC can help, but restore
Speaker 2: quicker because you got a longer level arm to the
Speaker 2: back to the veins and a shorter level arm to
Speaker 2: the front. I'm not an extreme foc guy, but it's
Speaker 2: the reason why I don't recommend like a low foc
Speaker 2: like heavy arrows, you know, heavy arrows with one hundred
Speaker 2: grain points, fifteen grain inserts, sixteen grain inserts, they often
Speaker 2: have f focs that are down in that ten percent
Speaker 2: or even less. I don't recommend that. It's it's more
Speaker 2: likely to be unstable.
Speaker 1: I like them.
Speaker 2: I like to be over twelve percent on a hunting arrow,
Speaker 2: you know, I think twelve to sixteen percent is typically
Speaker 2: the range that I can hit, having a fairly long
Speaker 2: draw and a longer arrow. But I don't see any
Speaker 2: of to go extreme on that, you know, up to
Speaker 2: you know, twenty percent range either. But yeah, that can help, and.
Speaker 1: My head's already spinning to ask you a bunch of
Speaker 1: questions and extreme like you know, the veins, you're probably
Speaker 1: gonna touch on it. Maybe I'll just save that question.
Speaker 1: I always like to think of the extremes, like if
Speaker 1: we didn't have all the constraints on getting like large
Speaker 1: veins by our rests and all these things that, you know,
Speaker 1: if you were to just shoot as large a vein
Speaker 1: as possible, like can you stabilize that real quick? And
Speaker 1: could you overcome that? Versus like you're within the constraints
Speaker 1: of what we consider a hunting vein that needs to
Speaker 1: clear your shelf, your rest, you're you know, all of that,
Speaker 1: Like how much how important is that? Could be? Design
Speaker 1: a vein that would work better than what's available, but
Speaker 1: it may be louder, it may you know, put extreme
Speaker 1: drag on you know, all of these things, and it's
Speaker 1: probably not practical. But is there a solution out there
Speaker 1: if that wasn't a constraint, that we could get these
Speaker 1: arrows stabilized and really steer a fixed blade really well?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we'll jump right into some of the
Speaker 2: this answers there of what can help you out, And
Speaker 2: a taller vein definitely helps and how having that area
Speaker 2: high and back also helps. So the shape of the
Speaker 2: vein and the height of the vein are two big factors.
Speaker 2: So the from the first year study that that hunter profile,
Speaker 2: this using the max hunter had was kind of the
Speaker 2: best industry profile that we found because there's a lot
Speaker 2: of area high in high and back on that shape
Speaker 2: versus what's kind of known as more of a parabolic
Speaker 2: where it's more of a fully rounded back end, where
Speaker 2: there's more area forward. So this this geometry, if if
Speaker 2: there's a similar surface area, this geometry had I think
Speaker 2: was a twenty three percent increase in this restoring torque
Speaker 2: or stability. So that was a big factor. Another thing
Speaker 2: was height. So what I what I find is a
Speaker 2: lot of people say they used to shoot a higher
Speaker 2: profile vein, but they've gone to a shorter one for
Speaker 2: sound or to reduce drag or you know, whatever reason.
Speaker 2: But what we found in the study is so this
Speaker 2: hybrid hunter is point five eight inches high. If we
Speaker 2: model one that's ten percent shorter, so point five to three,
Speaker 2: or you know, there's a lot of veins that are
Speaker 2: point five to five. If you go from point five
Speaker 2: to five, say two point five zero that ten percent
Speaker 2: reduction in height, you get about a two and a
Speaker 2: half percent reduction in drag, but you get an eleven
Speaker 2: percent reduction in restoring torque. So it's not a good
Speaker 2: trade off. I think a taller veins better. That's why
Speaker 2: I generally recommend with with broadheads on the front that
Speaker 2: I think a point five to five inch point five
Speaker 2: to five point five eight inch veins, you know, are
Speaker 2: going to perform better. You can even perform better. Yet
Speaker 2: by having more of that area kind of kind of
Speaker 2: high and back, that geometry you know, works really well
Speaker 2: to restore get them very quickly. You know, it both
Speaker 2: can be out of tune. We kind of quantify how
Speaker 2: far out of tune, but it could be pretty far
Speaker 2: out of tune. Still have broadheads hit with field points
Speaker 2: with those taller vein and that right kind of geometry
Speaker 2: of the vein.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you know I used to I shoot
Speaker 1: a four and I'll ask you about four versus three
Speaker 1: or what you fell in there. But one thing I
Speaker 1: struggle with is if I start to get too taller
Speaker 1: on that upper end shooting a four vein, like I
Speaker 1: start to run into potential contact issues with my rest
Speaker 1: you know, some of these other issues that you know
Speaker 1: that that it's like the point of you know, limiting
Speaker 1: return or the point of I need to go backwards,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's just nothing I'm gonna make work
Speaker 1: unless I was to go to three vein. Do you
Speaker 1: guys in your studies do you start to look at that?
Speaker 1: Are you just looking at just pure data on what
Speaker 1: controls the best and then you know if you can
Speaker 1: make a rest or a hunting rest work, you can?
Speaker 1: Or are you guys looking at that, like, how do
Speaker 1: we how do we get these to clear clear arrest
Speaker 1: at for four veins? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So you know what, And we've done some modeling of
Speaker 2: four veins versus three, and I've done some testing at
Speaker 2: four versus three, and a lot of people are going
Speaker 2: much shorter maybe zero point four inch tall vein, but
Speaker 2: four of them. And what I found is that it
Speaker 2: doesn't do nearly as good a job stabilizing as three
Speaker 2: taller veins, and you have the added drag and sound
Speaker 2: of a fourth vein, And so I feel like three
Speaker 2: taller veins is kind of more efficient in doing everything
Speaker 2: you want a vein to do, which is to me,
Speaker 2: you know, you want a vein to have good, good stability,
Speaker 2: So create that lift force that's going to push it
Speaker 2: back on, but kind of minimize the drag. If you
Speaker 2: minimize drag, you also minimize wind drift because what happens
Speaker 2: in wind drift when you get this, say crossflow, what
Speaker 2: happens is your your arrow making an initial kind of
Speaker 2: kick sideways from that crosswind, but then it pretty quickly
Speaker 2: aligns to that resultant direction of airflow. And like if
Speaker 2: you say you're bow shooting, throw eighty feet per second
Speaker 2: and you have I think a sixteen mile or across
Speaker 2: wind is what I calculated the numbers, four, your arrow
Speaker 2: would end up tipping like five degrees into the wind.
Speaker 2: And most of that wind drift is just due to
Speaker 2: that inline drag. So if you can reduce inline drag,
Speaker 2: you can reduce wind drift as well. And that's why
Speaker 2: I think three higher profile is a little better than
Speaker 2: than four slightly lower profile, because you might you probably
Speaker 2: get less drag overall and better restoring. But to answer
Speaker 2: your question, if you had four tall ones, would that
Speaker 2: stabilize even better? Yeah, it would, But you know, if
Speaker 2: you're contacting something that kind of blows everything right because
Speaker 2: your accuracy is gone, So yeah, I can see the
Speaker 2: trade off there. You for sure want to make sure
Speaker 2: that's not an issue, so you know, you know, pottering
Speaker 2: your rest or or somehow, you know, figuring making sure
Speaker 2: you're not getting rest contact is very important when you're
Speaker 2: shooting those taller veins. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: Another quick question for you. So one of the reasons
Speaker 1: I shoot four veane and my I feel like my
Speaker 1: arrows are pretty pretty good. You know, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the quality of arrows. You know, everybody's got the one,
Speaker 1: you know, one one thousandth of an inch straightness or
Speaker 1: five one thousands how much all of that matters. But
Speaker 1: I shoot a pretty good arrow. But I've always shot
Speaker 1: four veins because there are times where you know, and
Speaker 1: you probably know more about this than I do as well,
Speaker 1: but there's always like a strong side of the arrow,
Speaker 1: right or the spine of the arrow is usually stronger
Speaker 1: no matter how you know, high quality they are. So
Speaker 1: by having four veins, it gives me the ability to
Speaker 1: knock tune, you know, more consistently, versus especially if I
Speaker 1: go with a cock vein and everything's kind of messed up,
Speaker 1: you know, or it's set, then it really kind of
Speaker 1: screws my coloring up unless I just went with all
Speaker 1: white veins and you know, took a sharpiend put a
Speaker 1: star on which everyone should be up or down or
Speaker 1: whatever that was. That's my own personal reason because there
Speaker 1: are times where it's like, man, this arrow just flies
Speaker 1: with the rest of them. If I turn the knock
Speaker 1: ninety degrees, you know, I set set the knock out,
Speaker 1: you know, with the little tick the indicator or the
Speaker 1: index on the on the knock, I just set to
Speaker 1: the outside of my riser. And that's kind of my system.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's really the only reason I shoot four
Speaker 1: over three is for knock tuning. But now you're you're
Speaker 1: almost talking me into maybe going back and checking out
Speaker 1: three white veins and then I can just you know,
Speaker 1: draw on the one that needs to be up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's why I typically do, and that's
Speaker 2: what you do custom build aero builds and we just
Speaker 2: do the three white veins, and yeah, it kind of
Speaker 2: gives you the option for three different positions of your
Speaker 2: arrow if you would need it. But but honestly, what
Speaker 2: I what I've found, and you know, I used to
Speaker 2: measure spine on every arrow, and you know, go to
Speaker 2: the flutch to the high side and do all that.
Speaker 2: But as I've learned more, and what I've found is
Speaker 2: if well, first off, you want to be properly spined
Speaker 2: like you do, not want to be underspined. So I
Speaker 2: and we put we put charts on our website. You
Speaker 2: know for this reason that the numbers on there, so
Speaker 2: it'll have different You can pick the chart for how
Speaker 2: it's total weight you want up front with your broadhead
Speaker 2: end components. We have charge from one twenty five, seventy five,
Speaker 2: two hundred up to two and fifty granes up front,
Speaker 2: and then you know your arrow length and your bow
Speaker 2: poundage and it'll give you recommended aerowspine and those charts
Speaker 2: we put together at Ironwellfitters dot com, they're going to
Speaker 2: tell you there won't be on the light end. They'll
Speaker 2: be a little more conservative. They'll be like optimal to
Speaker 2: slightly stiff. And what I've seen with that with the
Speaker 2: high speed camera is in doing that, you get very
Speaker 2: little flex of the arrow. Anyway, I get like a
Speaker 2: half inch of vertical flex coming out of the bow
Speaker 2: and then like within six feet it's just going straight.
Speaker 2: And I think for a hunting arrow, that's what you
Speaker 2: want for target arrow it doesn't matter so much. Watch
Speaker 2: you know, you you may find that and a lot
Speaker 2: of you know, target archers will do this. I'll add
Speaker 2: maybe add the more more or less point weight and
Speaker 2: find out where they can hold the tightest groups. And
Speaker 2: if target archery is most more important to you, no
Speaker 2: no problem doing that. That that makes sense. But what
Speaker 2: you can find is that you could be underspined. And
Speaker 2: I've talked to doctor James Parks about this, who's done
Speaker 2: a lot of papers and research. He has a he
Speaker 2: has a PhD in mechanical engineering. A lot of it
Speaker 2: was on target aerow flight and then he was the
Speaker 2: coach for the national team for Australia for archery. You
Speaker 2: know what he found is that spine doesn't matter that much.
Speaker 2: You can go quite a bit underspine and still shoot
Speaker 2: pretty good groups in target archery. I would not recommend
Speaker 2: that for broadheads for a couple of reasons. One, if
Speaker 2: your arrow's excessively flexing up and down, now that that
Speaker 2: blade is giving some you know, angle of attack to
Speaker 2: the oncoming airflow, it's.
Speaker 1: Going to push you off.
Speaker 2: Also at impact, you know, the best probably the best
Speaker 2: measurement of how much penetration you're going to get is
Speaker 2: that momentum which is mass times velocity and it's a
Speaker 2: vector quantity, so in that straight line. So you want
Speaker 2: that mass and that velocity to be in a straight
Speaker 2: line to maximize your penetration. And then that's going to
Speaker 2: be equal to some force time's time. So you couple
Speaker 2: that with a low force to penetrate. You know, a
Speaker 2: broadhead is going to have low force to cut through
Speaker 2: high bone whatever. That's going to maximize your penetration. So anyway,
Speaker 2: that's that's kind of a long explanation of why you
Speaker 2: want to have kind of optimal spine to to a
Speaker 2: little stiff But once you do that, I found and
Speaker 2: you have an arrow that's got relatively consistent spine around
Speaker 2: the shaft, and I would say that you know, you
Speaker 2: know with the Eastern accesses is the ones we do
Speaker 2: custom EERI builds with. They do a good job. But
Speaker 2: you know, the top manufacturers out there, I think they
Speaker 2: all do a pretty good job. You know, Victory Goal
Speaker 2: to Black Eagle, you know, they're premium hunting arrows. I
Speaker 2: think there's not a lot of variation. It's spiner on
Speaker 2: the shaft and what I've seen is if you have
Speaker 2: a bow just relatively well tuned and you're properly spined
Speaker 2: to a bit stiff, there's not really a need to
Speaker 2: knock tune. You put that broad head on and have
Speaker 2: a very stable arrow, and there's not really there shouldn't
Speaker 2: really be a need to knock tune to get that
Speaker 2: to fly right. That's been my experience after you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of taking into this, a
Speaker 2: lot of experimentation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and my knock tuning may come as a result
Speaker 1: of me just shooting a bad arrow and me thinking
Speaker 1: that you know, I did I think fly perfect? No,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that's probably it's probably me torking
Speaker 1: the bow or doing something I shouldn't and that's what
Speaker 1: probably gets me into knock tuning. But uh, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's that's the reason why I went to four vein.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'll probably flutch them up with three veins
Speaker 1: this year and see if it doesn't doesn't work for
Speaker 1: me and give me a little bit more more ability
Speaker 1: to get around the rest by being able to have
Speaker 1: those at one hundred and twenty degrees instead of ninety
Speaker 1: degrees going over the over the rest. So is there
Speaker 1: anything else out of that study at Colorado. You know,
Speaker 1: I know you you talked about you know, mass versus speed,
Speaker 1: you know, foc We've talked about all that a little bit.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else you want to you want to
Speaker 1: get into on those or we or or you know
Speaker 1: findings that came out of the study. Yeah.
Speaker 2: One thing I would mention is is a spin up
Speaker 2: because I think there's some misconceptions out there. So so
Speaker 2: the arrow spin up isn't really doesn't really stabilize the arrow.
Speaker 2: It's not like a bullet that has to spin it
Speaker 2: very high velocity because it's an unstable projectile and that
Speaker 2: spin gives it to stability in an arrow, it's not
Speaker 2: spinning that fast. You do want it to spin, though,
Speaker 2: you don't want to have you don't want to have
Speaker 2: it straight fletched. I don't even like one degree. I
Speaker 2: think it doesn't quite. It just spends too much time
Speaker 2: going kind of straight before it starts rotating. And the
Speaker 2: problem there is is that if there's anything that's off,
Speaker 2: So what spin up does. It doesn't stabilize the arrow,
Speaker 2: but it does average out any asymmetries if if the
Speaker 2: point is tipped off to the left, because you're you're say,
Speaker 2: your half out's bent a little bit, and your arrow's pointing,
Speaker 2: you know, twenty thousands to the left, twenty thousand of
Speaker 2: an inch, and you shoot it without rotation, it's just
Speaker 2: gonna it's just gonna go further and further left and
Speaker 2: impact you know, left to the target. If it's rotating,
Speaker 2: that lift force that's created now rotates kind of with it,
Speaker 2: so it still kind of opens up your groups, but
Speaker 2: it keeps it on average, you know, still heading down
Speaker 2: range at the target. So that's the reason for spin.
Speaker 2: But spinning really fast, even though there're be bents of
Speaker 2: videos recently with guys that are awesome shooters say the
Speaker 2: faster it spins up, the more accurate or stable it
Speaker 2: will be. I don't think. I don't think that's the case.
Speaker 1: I liked.
Speaker 2: I like, and what from all this study, I like
Speaker 2: the two to three degree offset or helical I think
Speaker 2: is a good amount of a vein angle to give
Speaker 2: you that spin up. And a lot of the we tested,
Speaker 2: you know, eight or ten to the top hunting what
Speaker 2: i'd consider top pending rains in the industry, they all
Speaker 2: gave very similar spin up results of you know, seventy
Speaker 2: to eighty revolutions per second. With that you're rotating. You know,
Speaker 2: it's less than an arrow length that you're getting a
Speaker 2: full rotation, so it can't veer very far off of
Speaker 2: straight line, you know before it's rotating and you know,
Speaker 2: pointing a different direction. I think that's good. I don't
Speaker 2: see a need for that very high, you know, five
Speaker 2: six degree spin, because then you're going to add more
Speaker 2: drag and more drop, more, more wind drift. It is
Speaker 2: fine if you're not. You know, a lot of these
Speaker 2: things don't matter if you're going to shoot shoot under forty.
Speaker 2: But if you're an out west bowhunter you're trying to
Speaker 2: shoot very accurately sixty yards plus, then these these factors
Speaker 2: are are more important.
Speaker 1: Yep. I know you mentioned two to three degrees straight
Speaker 1: versus here cool. Do you have a like on your
Speaker 1: hunting arrows? Do you go one way or the other
Speaker 1: or does it really ends up being a wash? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think.
Speaker 2: Are you saying offset versus helical?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah? Just straight off versus yeah, yeah versus a
Speaker 1: helical and and all that you can say your preference
Speaker 1: and all kind of explain why I end up where
Speaker 1: I'm at. Yeah.
Speaker 2: To me, man, there isn't really much of a difference.
Speaker 2: If I think about what a helix is in geometry,
Speaker 2: is if you take a straight line, you know, down
Speaker 2: the cylinder and down the top of the cylinder, Say
Speaker 2: you tip it at three degrees, you wrap it around
Speaker 2: the cylinder, that's a helix.
Speaker 3: Yah.
Speaker 2: And really that's kind of what you're trying to do
Speaker 2: with any of these clamps. To me, it's more of
Speaker 2: a clamp. You got a straight clamp or a helical clamp.
Speaker 2: But the straight clamp to me, is for small angles.
Speaker 2: You know, it works well for you know, one degree,
Speaker 2: maybe two degrees. If you get more than that, it
Speaker 2: starts not following the roll off of the radius, and
Speaker 2: that's when you need a helical clamp. But and that's
Speaker 2: why I say I kind of consider them both the same.
Speaker 2: It's more that clamp system you use and is it
Speaker 2: fixed or does it wrap the narrow shaft. So my
Speaker 2: preference would be a helical like two and a half
Speaker 2: two to three degree, because I think it wraps the
Speaker 2: shaft and it keeps it attached a little attaches it.
Speaker 1: A little better. Yeah, And that's that's exactly what I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, the only reason I went from you know,
Speaker 1: straight offset was because we used to shoot the older
Speaker 1: six milimeters, you know, the old the old gold tips
Speaker 1: when they had you know, larger diameters and you can
Speaker 1: actually get a two to three degree offset to actually
Speaker 1: touch and you're you know, you're the back of your
Speaker 1: vein wasn't floating and the front wasn't floating. We're now,
Speaker 1: you know, shooting some of these micro diameter you know,
Speaker 1: I shoot Black Eagle, you know, ram pages, and it's
Speaker 1: like you can't get more than two degrees on the
Speaker 1: you know, on your vein without especially in the straight,
Speaker 1: without it touching. So we've just went to to Helo
Speaker 1: coal and it, uh, you know, it seems to seems
Speaker 1: to work really well. And that's really the only reason
Speaker 1: I always preferred straight. But Helo coal seems to give
Speaker 1: me like better contact on the front of the vein
Speaker 1: in the back and it seems to kind of get
Speaker 1: stayed glued down a little bit better.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, I agree. And then the last thing I
Speaker 2: want to mention this study that we spent a lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of time on this year was sound.
Speaker 2: That's another reason people have gone away, maybe gone away
Speaker 2: from a higher profile vein, especially like a shorter, higher
Speaker 2: profile vein, is they feel like they're louder, and so
Speaker 2: they've gone to shorter, longer ones which are less stable,
Speaker 2: so less accurate. But what we've what I found was sound.
Speaker 2: First off, I'm going to say that I don't think
Speaker 2: it's that important. I don't think it's as important as
Speaker 2: people make it out to be. And the reason for
Speaker 2: that is, you know, we're shooting over the over microphones,
Speaker 2: and we had we had two omni directional microphones, you know,
Speaker 2: down range that we would shoot over and then we
Speaker 2: would record the sound trace from the shot and then
Speaker 2: the arrow traveling to the target, and then as it
Speaker 2: passed over the target. And we did a lot of
Speaker 2: analysis when the arrows ten yards away from the target
Speaker 2: or the animals, say, and when it's ten yards away,
Speaker 2: they're all pretty quiet. It's hard to get a statistically
Speaker 2: significant difference between one vein and another. I mean, we
Speaker 2: also found that our solid blade broadheads are very quiet
Speaker 2: and we can't really distinguish them from field points. And
Speaker 2: that's even as it passes, even as it passes over
Speaker 2: the microphone. So that's kind of a side note, but
Speaker 2: some broadhads are louder than others, and I think it's
Speaker 2: because there's not a lot of fluidynamic modeling to try
Speaker 2: and minimize the turbulence and minimize that coming off the back.
Speaker 2: But also we did a lot of studying of the veins.
Speaker 2: So one thing I should say is that when the
Speaker 2: arrows ten yards say from the animal, it's hard to
Speaker 2: distinguish one vein from another. But that flare up of
Speaker 2: sound is more when it's in that last five yards
Speaker 2: three yards. So again I don't think it's that important
Speaker 2: because I think if it didn't hear something it wants
Speaker 2: to react to when it's ten yards away, it's probably
Speaker 2: it doesn't have enough time to get out of the way.
Speaker 2: That being said, I don't think I'll ever convince people
Speaker 2: that sound doesn't matter. So I spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time on it this year. We really looked at the
Speaker 2: fluid flow over all these different vein designs. What was
Speaker 2: causing the higher sound than others, And a lot of
Speaker 2: it was just the geometry and the way that the
Speaker 2: flow wasn't staying attached to the veins, you know, this airflow,
Speaker 2: it was you know, separating causing these turbulence, and we
Speaker 2: saw that show up and sound, and you know, sometimes
Speaker 2: it's if you're very very flexible vein, some of those
Speaker 2: would flutter and that would really amplify the sound. But
Speaker 2: a lot of it was was geometry.
Speaker 1: Yep, Yeah, because and I don't I think my numbers
Speaker 1: are a little rusty. But what the speed of sound?
Speaker 1: So my thoughts on sound, which is probably incorrect. You know,
Speaker 1: speed of sounds a little bit over what eleven hundred
Speaker 1: feet per second. Let's say we're shooting a three hundred
Speaker 1: foot per second, you know arrow, so your arrow only
Speaker 1: makes it a quarter of the way. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a little more than a quarter, I guess. But I
Speaker 1: think it comes down to the animal, correct, Like if
Speaker 1: the sound of your bow goes off will be, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, the sound that really alerts the animal, correct,
Speaker 1: Like the or do you think that the arrow flight
Speaker 1: would be the sound that the animal picks up on
Speaker 1: and they don't hear your bow go off? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think, Well, you can argue with how far away
Speaker 2: the animal is, but I'd say most archery shots, yeah,
Speaker 2: they're going to hear the bow go off. And and
Speaker 2: you're right, the arrow's arrows, you know, ten yards down
Speaker 2: Let's say it's just a forty yards shot. You know
Speaker 2: your arrow's ten yards down range before he hears the bow,
Speaker 2: because you know the time it takes for the sound
Speaker 2: of the bow to get there. What we also saw
Speaker 2: is that that boast is not instantaneous, but it rings.
Speaker 2: That bon noise is ringing. So the arrows traveled ten
Speaker 2: yards and there's still bon noise ringing and coming off
Speaker 2: and a lot. So any short shots, say forty yards
Speaker 2: in under, I feel like it's totally the bon noise,
Speaker 2: either they're reacting to that or not, because it's so
Speaker 2: much louder than the arrow noise and it rings for
Speaker 2: you know, the arrows moved ten yards and that all
Speaker 2: that ringing is coming off of it, and you know
Speaker 2: in that that noise is just getting to the animal
Speaker 2: when that arrow's ten yards down right, So you know,
Speaker 2: people say, well I looked at the video and the
Speaker 2: arrow was halfway there when the deer moved, Well, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's really when he heard the bow go off and
Speaker 2: had time to react to it. So I do think
Speaker 2: the bon noise is a is a bigger factor, and
Speaker 2: trying to quiet your bow is a good idea. I
Speaker 2: think those you know, the long range shots are where
Speaker 2: people might argue that all the bon noise is pretty quiet,
Speaker 2: and then he had quite a bit, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: he had a half a second to a second could
Speaker 2: before the arrow got there, and in them argue that
Speaker 2: aarrow noise matters more then, you know, and I would,
Speaker 2: I would kind of argue that I'm not so sure
Speaker 2: that it's aeron noise versus just what he what the
Speaker 2: animal sees, because an animal, you know, they hear the
Speaker 2: bon noise, they look that way and then their their
Speaker 2: motion vision is extremely good. You know. It's there's different
Speaker 2: studies on this that will say, like you know, Darrin Elk,
Speaker 2: vision is all set up for movement. So if they
Speaker 2: look that way and then they and then you're moving,
Speaker 2: which you probably are, you know, after the shot, they
Speaker 2: could might see the arrow in flight. I think a
Speaker 2: lot of that later movement is due to a visual
Speaker 2: que But you know, it's all this stuff's really hard
Speaker 2: to prove. So you know, we spend a lot of
Speaker 2: time figuring out how we could quiet down a vein,
Speaker 2: and we're actually gonna come out with a new vein
Speaker 2: probably sometime in.
Speaker 1: August that has that same.
Speaker 2: You know, has kind of equal or better accuracy stability
Speaker 2: to that hybrid Hunter profile, but it's got jiffing geometry
Speaker 2: on the front and back to keep that airflow attached
Speaker 2: to the vein to make it much quieter. It's you know,
Speaker 2: I think Max Stealth was our quietest you know, industry
Speaker 2: vein out there that we tested in the first year,
Speaker 2: and it's you know, equal or quieter than the Max Stealth,
Speaker 2: even though it's got much better stability. So for those
Speaker 2: that really want that quieter vein but yet still have
Speaker 2: good stability, I think that'll be a good option for people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I've always you know, I've just always been
Speaker 1: to the camp or the thought that keep my stuff
Speaker 1: as quiet as I can, and it's going to help it.
Speaker 1: It's not going to make anything worse because my stuff's quieter.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I can't tell you how much it really matters.
Speaker 1: It's just I'm going to make every effort to keep
Speaker 1: things as quiet as I can, you know, or as possible.
Speaker 2: You know, some people are going with a shorter vein
Speaker 2: to be quieter, but then they're doing all these other
Speaker 2: things that make it louder. You know, some guys are
Speaker 2: like shooting feathers and then worrying about sound. Well, feathers
Speaker 2: are so much louder than veins and broad henad that's
Speaker 2: kind of crazy. Or they'll go very high speed, you know,
Speaker 2: that makes it louder. Of course it's getting there faster,
Speaker 2: but your bow's much louder and the arrows louder. Or
Speaker 2: you know, they won't worry about their tunes so much.
Speaker 2: They'll say, well, yeah I can't if I go to mechanical,
Speaker 2: I can shoot, but I can't shoot fixed. Well that
Speaker 2: that'll point out they have some issue with say spine
Speaker 2: or the bow's out of tune. Both of those make
Speaker 2: the arrow much louder. If your arrow's fish tailing, it's
Speaker 2: way down there, or you're having a bunch of flexing,
Speaker 2: those increase drag, wind drift and sound.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's a.
Speaker 2: Lot of other factors there that I don't think people
Speaker 2: necessarily consider that they're you know, choosing the wrong direction
Speaker 2: on So I just want to point that out too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One thing, you know, and I picked it up,
Speaker 1: I noticed it before, but like when we used to
Speaker 1: go to the ATA, I used to work with Martin
Speaker 1: Archerie a little bit when they were still back in Washington.
Speaker 1: You know, the old ATA trick. So everybody thinks you've
Speaker 1: got the quietest new bow as you have them shooting
Speaker 1: a nine hundred green arrow out of the boat. All
Speaker 1: the test bows, you know, they don't really know how
Speaker 1: heavy that arrow is. But it quieted everything down and
Speaker 1: there was nothing there weren't enough limb savers, enough limb attachments,
Speaker 1: enough whatever to compensate for just a couple hundred grains
Speaker 1: in arroweight, you know. So there's things you can do.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't shoot an ultra fast setup. I
Speaker 1: shoot two eighty with typically a fairly heavy arrow that
Speaker 1: you know, does more for noise, you know, than all
Speaker 1: these other I don't want to call them gizmos or gimmicks,
Speaker 1: but you know, any attachments you can add to that system,
Speaker 1: the heavier arrow seems to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, I think kind of that very light, very
Speaker 2: fast arrow. There's a lot of negatives there, I mean,
Speaker 2: then the positive and it's great if you're shooting like
Speaker 2: three D are unmarked three D archery and you got
Speaker 2: a eyeball range. Yet I mean, that's really the reason
Speaker 2: for having a super fast light arrow is if your
Speaker 2: range is off. You know, you can still hit the
Speaker 2: target being off a few yards, say, but in a
Speaker 2: honey set up, it's not great for a number of reasons.
Speaker 2: For one, a lighter, faster arrow, you know, you lose
Speaker 2: a lot more of that velocity due to drag. You know, velocity.
Speaker 2: Drag is velocity proportional to velocity squared. So a light
Speaker 2: fast arrow is gonna lose more velocity, You're gonna have
Speaker 2: less momentum at impact. Yeah, and your your bow's louder,
Speaker 2: and it's more difficult to tune and things like that
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: Yep, yeah, all.
Speaker 1: Right, let's move into You know, I I wish I
Speaker 1: was more of a of a bow tuner. I'm real
Speaker 1: kind of you know, I pay attention, but I'm kind
Speaker 1: of hands off. What's your process for going into season,
Speaker 1: because I'm gonna give you a real quick synopsis of
Speaker 1: me bow hunting fifteen years ago. You'd go in, get
Speaker 1: your bow set up, you get it all paper tuned
Speaker 1: with your your field points, go out and shoot, and
Speaker 1: then about two weeks before season, I'd start shooting broadheads
Speaker 1: and my confidence would go out the window. All that
Speaker 1: confidence I had built up all summer was gone, and
Speaker 1: so then it was like start over, walk back, take
Speaker 1: it into the shop, try again. Take it into the shop.
Speaker 1: I would, I'd move my rest over, screw something up
Speaker 1: worse than I could figure out. And it was that
Speaker 1: was my process and then finally before season, you'd get it,
Speaker 1: get it back. Now, you know, my system is I
Speaker 1: don't pay per tune hardly all anymore. We kind of
Speaker 1: just go a center shot, knock heite, get it close.
Speaker 1: And then my new system is just shooting field points
Speaker 1: and broadheads separately until I get them to walk together,
Speaker 1: and then I just leave my bow alone. You know,
Speaker 1: strings will stretch, cables will stretch over time. But what's
Speaker 1: your opinion, like, what's the how do you get your
Speaker 1: stuff ready? And is there a right way or wrong
Speaker 1: way or just a way that you go about it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and my my methods have kind of evolved over
Speaker 2: over the years. But you know, currently what I'm doing,
Speaker 2: and I'll say that I I'll shoot broadheads. Broadheads will
Speaker 2: be part of my tuning from you know, day one
Speaker 2: pretty much, or maybe not day one, but you know,
Speaker 2: within the first you know, a week or so, I'm
Speaker 2: shooting some broadheads to see how they fly because, like
Speaker 2: you said, if your target archer setup might be dialed
Speaker 2: and then you throw broad heads on later and they're
Speaker 2: not flying well. Well, to me, it's I'm I'm a
Speaker 2: bow hunter. I mean, I do target shooting, I do
Speaker 2: tack events three d's for fun. But it's really comes
Speaker 2: down to I want to hit that elk or caribou
Speaker 2: or you know this year I drew a goat tag,
Speaker 2: or I drew a sheep tag this year, so I
Speaker 2: want to hit that sheep, you know, for sure at range.
Speaker 2: So really good broadhead flight is very important to me,
Speaker 2: so I incorporated fairly early. But anyways, my tuning setup
Speaker 2: is or my my method. I'd say, yeah, I'll set
Speaker 2: up I'll set up center shot. I'll set up you know,
Speaker 2: the arrow to go through the center of the burger
Speaker 2: button roughly, I'll put a knock you know, knock points
Speaker 2: perpendicular to that. I'll shoot through paper. And what I
Speaker 2: do is, i'll have a I'll have a bear shaft
Speaker 2: and a flat shaft just with a field points initially
Speaker 2: in that bear shaft. It'll you know, if I already
Speaker 2: got all that, if I got out of the arrow's bilt,
Speaker 2: I'll cut the veins off one. Otherwise I'll just build
Speaker 2: one up and I'll add some weight to it. I'll
Speaker 2: use like metal duct tape, so I have to put
Speaker 2: too much on, But you can also just put a
Speaker 2: couple of wraps on. Try to get that arrow weight
Speaker 2: total arrow weight to be about the same, and that
Speaker 2: a mass difference in back will affect your dynamic spine
Speaker 2: a little bit, So I like to kind of add
Speaker 2: weight at the back to make them equal, and then
Speaker 2: i'll uh, you know, initially, I'll shoot through paper with
Speaker 2: the flat shaft and a bear shaft and you know,
Speaker 2: make some adjustments to basically getting getting a bullet hole
Speaker 2: through paper. And the reason I'll use a bear shaft
Speaker 2: it's just easier to see when the veins aren't on it,
Speaker 2: if you're getting a perfect bullet hole or not, or
Speaker 2: if you're a little tail right up down or left.
Speaker 2: Just a little easier for me to see with the
Speaker 2: bear shaft. That's some of the reason for doing it there.
Speaker 2: And I'm doing it like ten to twelve feet, So
Speaker 2: I'll do that and then I'll get some shots through
Speaker 2: the through the bow. You know, I might shoot it
Speaker 2: for a week before I come back and visit it again,
Speaker 2: and then typically I'll check again through paper if that
Speaker 2: looks good. My next kind of my next level of
Speaker 2: tune is shooting that flet shaft and bear shaft with
Speaker 2: field points on. And you can start at twenty you know,
Speaker 2: to make sure you hit the target, but I'll really
Speaker 2: look at thirty yards and then and then forty yards
Speaker 2: for kind of a finer increment. But what will happen is,
Speaker 2: let's say your arrow's coming on your boattail left. Well,
Speaker 2: that airflow across that left side is with no veins
Speaker 2: to stabilize it back, it's just going to stay tail
Speaker 2: left and your arrow's going to hit off to the right,
Speaker 2: and you're if you're just shooting like a flat foam target,
Speaker 2: you can kind of see that it just stays tail
Speaker 2: left at impact. So your flet shaft will be say
Speaker 2: in the bull's eye, and you're right your bear shaft,
Speaker 2: you know, at thirty yards, say it's six inches right
Speaker 2: with the with the nocktail left. Well, then you know
Speaker 2: your boats your arrow's coming out of your bow tail left,
Speaker 2: and then you can adjust do an adjustment that would
Speaker 2: be adjusting your rest a little bit right. And these
Speaker 2: are small adjustments at this point, like you know, if
Speaker 2: you've got a micro adjust where you're just doing these
Speaker 2: five thous clicks, you just do a few clicks and
Speaker 2: check it again.
Speaker 1: But these aren't.
Speaker 2: These aren't the big, you know, big divisions on your
Speaker 2: on your wrist. These are more like you know, fifteen
Speaker 2: thous thirty thous do little little adjustments. I would also say,
Speaker 2: whenever you do an adjustment, shoot three, you know, even
Speaker 2: right off the bat, shoot three times and see if
Speaker 2: it's consistent.
Speaker 1: Because if you're.
Speaker 2: If you're six inches right the first time and like
Speaker 2: a foot left the next time, well, now there's some
Speaker 2: other problem there. It could be some major issue with
Speaker 2: your bow, or it could be your form just isn't consistent.
Speaker 2: And if your formed is inconsistent, you know, spend some
Speaker 2: more time figuring out what's going on there. Are you
Speaker 2: creating a bunch of face pressure, are you torquing your bow?
Speaker 2: Are you anticipating your shot? You know, have somebody observe
Speaker 2: you shooting and see if they can help you with
Speaker 2: your bow set up. But that's kind of my and
Speaker 2: then I'll go out to forty yards. And this is
Speaker 2: really how we quantified how far a bow was out
Speaker 2: of tune for testing these different vein heights and see
Speaker 2: how how well they stabilize a broadhead. What I found
Speaker 2: is that forty yards, if you're if your bear shaft
Speaker 2: hits within four inches of flat shaft, you're good to go.
Speaker 2: And you know, at thirty yards that would be saying
Speaker 2: like two to three inches. If your bear shaft is
Speaker 2: hitting two to three inches from your flat shaft, that's
Speaker 2: good enough.
Speaker 1: You don't need to be perfect.
Speaker 2: If you're you know, at forty yards with with it
Speaker 2: eight to twelve inches, right, I consider that pretty far
Speaker 2: out of tune. But what we saw is with the
Speaker 2: you know, the best veins like the hybrid Hunter vein,
Speaker 2: your broadheads and field points are still going to hit
Speaker 2: within an inch or so. Just stabilize it so quickly
Speaker 2: in a will. But that's how I quantify how auto
Speaker 2: tune it is. And that's what I'll say if we
Speaker 2: ever have a customer, you know, struggling to get brought
Speaker 2: into shoot, well for him, typically I'll just will figure
Speaker 2: out if you spine properly or not, and if his
Speaker 2: bow is you know, relative what vans he has on
Speaker 2: the back is aarow fairly stable and then is his
Speaker 2: bow just relatively well tuned, And we'll have him do
Speaker 2: that bear shaft floodshaft at thirty to quantify that. But
Speaker 2: that's kind of my my process anyway. And I would
Speaker 2: one last thing I'll add is that I don't do
Speaker 2: it once and then never look at it again. I'll
Speaker 2: and that's a good reason to just keep that bear
Speaker 2: shaft because you can then you know, shoot that, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, every couple of weeks or once a month
Speaker 2: maybe at that thirty yard target and see if it's
Speaker 2: still consistent. That that to me gives me a lot
Speaker 2: of confidence before I head it out. See, I just
Speaker 2: got done with the hunt. I'm going on another one.
Speaker 2: Shoot bear shaft, flotshaft at thirty and forty. If they're
Speaker 2: still hitting together, I know, nothing really changed much on
Speaker 2: the bow, and I'm still I'm still dial I'm still
Speaker 2: tuned in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great, great point there. It's okay, So
Speaker 1: we got through tuning you know arrow, you know, veins
Speaker 1: everything that matters. Now you know, I'm gonna move to broadheads.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I maybe stress out
Speaker 1: a lot is, you know, I got got new six
Speaker 1: iron wheels. You know, I put five on and I
Speaker 1: put them my quiver and I kind of go through
Speaker 1: them like I like this arrow the best. I like
Speaker 1: that one second, you know, I number them all, go through,
Speaker 1: shoot them and like this one just give me the
Speaker 1: most confidence, and then I'll shoot that one or to
Speaker 1: the number two arrow quite a bit? What in your opinion?
Speaker 1: You know what the steel you're using, and the temper
Speaker 1: and and everything we've got on them, and the hardening,
Speaker 1: like how often should you have to sharpen after a target?
Speaker 1: Do you have to sharpen? And if so, kind of
Speaker 1: how you recommend it. I'm gonna I'm gonna talk I
Speaker 1: blame myself last year, and I message you a little
Speaker 1: bit after that hunt on this and hopefully you don't
Speaker 1: mind talking about it. But I'm blaming myself on a
Speaker 1: blood trail I had last year. But first I'm gonna
Speaker 1: let you kind of go over sharpening, you know, and
Speaker 1: going through the target.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this will vary a lot by broadhead and
Speaker 2: steel used, and you know how sharp they start, but
Speaker 2: sharpness matters a lot, you know, and all the broadhead
Speaker 2: development work, I'd say that, you know, I was really
Speaker 2: going after durability initially like I wanted to get through
Speaker 2: that elk shoulder blade and you know, not damage a blade.
Speaker 2: But what I realized pretty quickly is having a very
Speaker 2: good sharpness and retaining that sharpness is really what gets
Speaker 2: you that max penetration through an animal, keeping that force
Speaker 2: load to penetrate. So I think it's very important to
Speaker 2: shoot sharp broadheads. So first off, i'd say, whatever broadheads
Speaker 2: you use, make sure they're they're sharp, because there's a
Speaker 2: lot of them, especially you know, one piece solid three
Speaker 2: blades that just aren't very sharp in some of them.
Speaker 2: Some of them they let you know that, but there's
Speaker 2: a lot of them that are just have a milled finish,
Speaker 2: so they're just machining with a you know, a milk
Speaker 2: a cutter and putting that edge on with no grinding
Speaker 2: at all, and so they're not they're not what I
Speaker 2: consider a sharp edge. If you have those, they want
Speaker 2: to use them, you know, spend the time time to
Speaker 2: learn how to sharpen them, because I think I think
Speaker 2: a broadhead blade, you know, it should be able to
Speaker 2: shave hair or if you don't want to, you know, accidentally,
Speaker 2: if you don't want to risk cutting your arm, you know,
Speaker 2: take a piece of paper and just hold it up
Speaker 2: and just see if you can easily cut into that
Speaker 2: edge of paper or is it tearing. That's another good
Speaker 2: test for sharpness. What I would say with you know,
Speaker 2: we use an a two tool steel and we use
Speaker 2: this you know, crygentic treatment triple temper, so we can
Speaker 2: get the hardness way up there at sixty rock we'll
Speaker 2: see hardness. So with that we can get it very
Speaker 2: sharp and it retains the edge well. So what I
Speaker 2: found is, and what I say is if you shot
Speaker 2: five times or less into foam, what I found is
Speaker 2: I can't measure a difference in sharpness. I would still
Speaker 2: check it. I would still try and cut that piece
Speaker 2: of paper or you know, shave a little hair on
Speaker 2: your arm, make sure it's still shaving hair. If it is,
Speaker 2: you know, put it in your quip and go ahead
Speaker 2: and use it. I can tell you that most broadhead
Speaker 2: blades are you know, four to twenty ninety or ninety
Speaker 2: five percent of them using four to twenty aintless and
Speaker 2: it just doesn't retain the edge. So one shot in
Speaker 2: a target, you're typically not sharp anymore. And that's just
Speaker 2: that's just be a practice head. But that's yeah, that's
Speaker 2: what I would say about that. But for sure, check
Speaker 2: your broad heads and you know, if if you want
Speaker 2: to take one head, I do think it's important. What
Speaker 2: I like to do is take one head and maybe
Speaker 2: it'll be my practice head and put it on every
Speaker 2: arrow that's going to my quiver and shoot it at
Speaker 2: you know, moderately long range and make sure it hits well,
Speaker 2: just to make sure there's not some issue with that
Speaker 2: arrow with spine or straightness, you know near you know,
Speaker 2: I think you mentioned straightness, the one thou versus three
Speaker 2: thousd straightness. It doesn't matter very much, I don't think
Speaker 2: unless it's all at say the knock, and if you've
Speaker 2: got like one little bend at the end that can
Speaker 2: make that arrow, you know, flex differently, shoot differently. So
Speaker 2: I like to shoot every arrow that's going in my
Speaker 2: quiver with a broad head, but it might just be
Speaker 2: my practice head and then I and then I just
Speaker 2: screw on a new one to make sure it's sharp.
Speaker 2: So that's that's a good way to go too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I always get nervous and I probably overthink everything.
Speaker 1: But it's like, man, if I unscrew this screw one
Speaker 1: on and then put my other one back on, like
Speaker 1: if I don't get everything just right, like, am I
Speaker 1: going to create an issue in they're somewhere? And I
Speaker 1: know it's probably overthinking, but that's one of my issues
Speaker 1: where I should just you know, dedicate, you know, whether
Speaker 1: I put black sharpie on him or something, just designate
Speaker 1: him as practice heads. That's something I might be doing.
Speaker 1: But I messaged you last and hopefully you don't mind
Speaker 1: talking about this. It's just real world results. And I
Speaker 1: do blame myself on this one a little bit. I
Speaker 1: had shot my number one head probably or my number
Speaker 1: one arrow probably more than I should have, you know,
Speaker 1: forty fifty times to the target, and I always was
Speaker 1: kind of doing the thumb flick, you know, off of it.
Speaker 1: Can you hear kind of the snap like you know,
Speaker 1: anybody's been around blades long enough usually if you get
Speaker 1: that like sharp crisp, you know, noise off of it,
Speaker 1: You're like, it's still pretty sharp, you know, it hasn't
Speaker 1: rolled an edge, And so I elected to hunt with it.
Speaker 1: And I hit a bowl at forty yards good in
Speaker 1: the pocket and every iron will that I've hit an
Speaker 1: animal on like blood everywhere instantly, like had great blood
Speaker 1: and on that one, I picked up blood, but not
Speaker 1: until one hundred yards away, and then it didn't bleed
Speaker 1: a lot, but it did sprint to its death. Like
Speaker 1: I'll give the broadhead credit that the elk died really well,
Speaker 1: but there was you know, I reached out to you
Speaker 1: just we found the bowl. Everything was good, but it
Speaker 1: was definitely a different blood till than I had before.
Speaker 1: And then I started to like blame myself, like you dummy,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't you know, usually it was five or ten
Speaker 1: shots and this time you went thirty forty fifty shots
Speaker 1: without you know, touching it up, you know. And yeah,
Speaker 1: like I said, I probably overanalyzed how sharp it needs
Speaker 1: to be. But that was the one time I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, we need to start paying more attention to
Speaker 1: how sharp your broadhead is, just because that flesh wound,
Speaker 1: that surface is what's going to give you that first blood.
Speaker 1: And I had a great pastor like right in the pocket,
Speaker 1: and just I didn't get a lot of blood. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, everything, all my experience shows I should
Speaker 1: have got great blood there and didn't. Was it a
Speaker 1: dull broadhead? And is that my fault?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think I think that has a lot to do
Speaker 2: with it what I've seen. You know, there's a sharp
Speaker 2: broadhead gives you two things that are important. It gives
Speaker 2: you that low force to penetrate, so it increases penetration,
Speaker 2: but it also slices all the tissue going all the
Speaker 2: way through. And you know, uh, Cody Greenwood trad Lab
Speaker 2: was doing some experimenting and where he was shooting through
Speaker 2: animals with different broadheads and then cut and then measuring
Speaker 2: like the the total lacerations, and and he said that
Speaker 2: every ironwell broadhead he shot, you get a full with
Speaker 2: cut with it, whereas a lot of other broadheads they're
Speaker 2: pushing a lot of tissue aside. Say a three blade
Speaker 2: that's not very sharp might only have like an arrow
Speaker 2: sized hole through liver or lungs. It tears a hole through,
Speaker 2: but it pushes a lot of tissue aside and doesn't
Speaker 2: slice it. And I think you know a lot of
Speaker 2: the bleeding. You know, animals for the most part are
Speaker 2: dying by by bleeding. I mean their lungskin collapse too.
Speaker 2: But a lot of that a lot of has blood flow.
Speaker 2: So you want to slice everything every little artery there
Speaker 2: a lot of times that's the difference between getting ANTM
Speaker 2: and not is slicing that artery, especially like you know,
Speaker 2: through the liver, say you can have you can shoot
Speaker 2: a liver in two different spots, and whether you cut
Speaker 2: an artery can mean it's it's dead in seconds or
Speaker 2: it's not dead for hours. So you know, cutting every
Speaker 2: every artery all the way through, you're gonna get more bleeding,
Speaker 2: better blood trails. So I'd say that's that's probably a
Speaker 2: pretty big factor. I mean, you can sometimes hitting up
Speaker 2: into the shoulder, up into the muscle, you know, if
Speaker 2: their leg was forward when you shot and then it
Speaker 2: came back. You know, sometimes there's you know muscle or
Speaker 2: you know, layers of muscle that might cover up a
Speaker 2: hole and make a blood trail not as good, you know.
Speaker 2: I you know, I could say, like a high lung shot,
Speaker 2: that can happen too, like the lungs are gonna collapse
Speaker 2: and then bleed. But if the holes are up high,
Speaker 2: blood coming out of there has got to go around
Speaker 2: the sides. You know, that can be potentially I'm not
Speaker 2: as good a blood trail. But you know, have that
Speaker 2: sharp broadhead gives you the best chance of slicing everything
Speaker 2: and giving you the best amount of bleeding possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and tighten that pocket.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I was trying to make excuses or try to figure
Speaker 1: it out, and I'm like, well, maybe it was so
Speaker 1: tight to the pocket that it was bleed in the
Speaker 1: pocket and then it would run down the leg, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's why we weren't getting anything to the ground,
Speaker 1: you know, outside of where it was. So, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just one of those things where in from here on out,
Speaker 1: everything's going to be razor sharp. I'll just get my
Speaker 1: flat stone out, you know, make sure that everything is
Speaker 1: touched up and sharp, and we won't won't want that
Speaker 1: at least it won't let the sharpness be the reason
Speaker 1: from here on out.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we do have wide We do have Wide
Speaker 2: series broad hits too. It's not I don't trying to
Speaker 2: recommend him as the number one head for you know,
Speaker 2: long range out west, big game when you might have
Speaker 2: a sixty eighty yard shot, you know whatever, whatever is
Speaker 2: your effective shooting range. I kind of like our our
Speaker 2: S series or our single Babble for those that are
Speaker 2: relatively a little bit more compact, but our wide heads,
Speaker 2: A lot of guys are using those for ELK too.
Speaker 2: They make they make big holes. And now we just
Speaker 2: came out with a wide single bevels as well, in
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty five grain, you know, one fifty
Speaker 2: grain on up, and you know that is a wider cut.
Speaker 2: It's two and eighth in is total cut inch of three.
Speaker 2: It's main blade three quarter bleeder and our bleeders have
Speaker 2: a single bubble grind on them too.
Speaker 1: So what that what.
Speaker 2: Happens with that is there's this rotation through the animal
Speaker 2: that really opens up those holes quite a bit, creates
Speaker 2: a lot of trauma. So yeah, we just launched those
Speaker 2: a week or so ago. And for guys that want
Speaker 2: to have you know, bigger holes, quick kills, more blood
Speaker 2: on the ground, you know, that's a great option too.
Speaker 2: I often carry a mixed quiver or a few of
Speaker 2: our S series or single bevel standard single bubbles, and
Speaker 2: then a few of our are wide or wide single
Speaker 2: bebbls And depending on what the shot is, if I'm
Speaker 2: if I'm melk cutting over water for the afternoon evening,
Speaker 2: I'll throw a widing because I've shot out with them.
Speaker 2: They penetrate great, They're just less forgiving on those longer
Speaker 2: range shots. But again with a very stable arrow. You
Speaker 2: know a friend Dan stat in elk shape. He likes
Speaker 2: the wise even the wide solid blade, but he's got
Speaker 2: a very stable arrow set up and he shoots him
Speaker 2: well to eighty yards. So that's an option too for
Speaker 2: getting that bigger hole and more blood on the ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you just brought up a point I'm curious on,
Speaker 1: you know, with you know, just the engineering and me
Speaker 1: thinking out loud, and you might be able to say
Speaker 1: why it isn't does a single bevel with that rotation
Speaker 1: through through bone, through you know, soft tissue. Does that?
Speaker 1: Have you found that the single bebel doesn't penetrate as well?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 1: Is it double bevel or is it negligible?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems to be negligible. I mean that was
Speaker 2: my thinking as well. You know, as an engineer, I'm thinking,
Speaker 2: you know, slicing straight through has got to be less
Speaker 2: energy required than you know, that pressure on those two
Speaker 2: babbles creating that torque and rotating through. But what is
Speaker 2: also happening is the arrow's rotating that direction already at pack,
Speaker 2: so there's some there's some rotational momentum there as well.
Speaker 2: So and and the single bubble isn't trying to make
Speaker 2: it rotate faster than that. So what I've seen in
Speaker 2: practical testing, man, I've had a heart.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I actually made single bubbels to try and prove that
Speaker 2: they weren't as good as double bubbles, but I really struggled.
Speaker 2: I mean, they they penetrate really well, and in the
Speaker 2: high speed video we've done, it just seems like that
Speaker 2: rotational you know, that rotation just keeps going through the animal,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't seem to really slow the arrow down
Speaker 2: anymore than the double bubble.
Speaker 3: Gotcha.
Speaker 1: Yeah, perfect, that's good to know. So you mentioned you
Speaker 1: got some new new broadheads coming out, anything else coming
Speaker 1: out or anything else that the listeners should know about,
Speaker 1: you know, choosing the broadhead this year? Arrow setup or
Speaker 1: vein set up to help mount this year is you know,
Speaker 1: seasons only a couple of months away.
Speaker 2: Well, something new from probably the last podcast we had
Speaker 2: is that from that aero study the first year I
Speaker 2: decided and and just seeing how well how much more
Speaker 2: accurate an arrow can be that's very stable. You know,
Speaker 2: we started doing the custom errow builds. I work with
Speaker 2: Easton to get their axis and match Greade access arrows
Speaker 2: and we fletch them at about three degree vehicle with
Speaker 2: that hybrid hunter vein. We started selling that vein as well.
Speaker 2: And for people that want, you know, don't want to
Speaker 2: build their own arrows, just want to have them built
Speaker 2: and know that they're done well. What I have is
Speaker 2: basically a machinist and a machining center, very accurately cutting
Speaker 2: and then facing both ends. I feel like that knock
Speaker 2: in is really important. It doesn't get enough attention. And
Speaker 2: that little squaring tool people often use and just do
Speaker 2: a couple of rotations, it doesn't do much to make
Speaker 2: that very square. So anyway, we do custom aerill builds now,
Speaker 2: you know, just for your length and work with you
Speaker 2: to make sure that the spine is proper for you.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of new. We're gonna, you know, continue
Speaker 2: to build on that. Yeah, we do some ultra light
Speaker 2: hunting knives. We just added our we called our K
Speaker 2: three boning knife ultra light boning knife. It's like about
Speaker 2: a five inch looks like a file a knife, a
Speaker 2: little bit stiffer, but it's a great boning knife for
Speaker 2: people that you know, like a little bit longer blade
Speaker 2: to take the say the hind quarters off off an elk.
Speaker 2: Things like that. So yeah, that's what's new currently. I've
Speaker 2: always got some prototype you know, broadheads in the works.
Speaker 2: I talked to you a bit about that one offline.
Speaker 2: Maybe some more things to test, but yeah, we'll have
Speaker 2: a new a new vein here and in August from
Speaker 2: this study that I think, well, yeah, people will like it.
Speaker 2: It's going to have low drag, low wind drift, low sound,
Speaker 2: but yet great stability.
Speaker 1: So it should be a great one perfect perfect. Well,
Speaker 1: how can everybody out there that doesn't already know about
Speaker 1: iron Will find you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, our website is Ironwelloutfitters dot com. We're on Instagram
Speaker 2: at Ironwill Outfitters Facebook and yeah YouTube as well at
Speaker 2: iron Well Offaters. We'll put I should mention those we're
Speaker 2: putting out some kind of white papers from that study
Speaker 2: from the university study on our website. So if you
Speaker 2: go to our website, I think it's under it's the
Speaker 2: far right, you know drop down menu. I think it's
Speaker 2: bow hunter block where we're gonna post papers from that study.
Speaker 2: So if you really want to geek out on there's
Speaker 2: one showing the arrow arrow. It's one on arrow height,
Speaker 2: our vain height instability and then you know vain shape,
Speaker 2: and we'll just keep posting them on there as we
Speaker 2: as we bring them up for you know, I love
Speaker 2: applying good mechanical engineering and science to becoming better bow hunters.
Speaker 2: So it's it's a it's something that I want to
Speaker 2: continue doing, and you know, trying to make people is
Speaker 2: reliable as science.
Speaker 1: Allows, perfect perfect. We appreciate all your all your hard
Speaker 1: hard work and research there Bill and helping us as
Speaker 1: bow hunters. You kind of figure all this out, so
Speaker 1: I appreciate having you on the on the show and
Speaker 1: good luck this fall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks Jason, you too,