lbclassic

Every experiment is just that... an experiment. This one was not 100% successful, but shows progress toward the goal...

Some time back, I fell in love with a non-Hill bow... it was an old lemonwood York longbow named "Buck". You can learn a lot about Buck and his adventures by following the link: "Passing the Buck" on the web site. Buck not mine, he was on loan. I hunted hard and found another identical York and also a couple of very similar old lemonwood Pearsons. I loved these old bows. Inevitably, I began to wonder how they would transfer into more modern form, i.e. the same bow design, but with tapered laminated wood limbs instead of being a lemonwood selfbow. Eventually, I asked Craig at HH Archery to see if he could build such a bow for me. I proposed calling it the "Longbowman's Classic". We discussed it and i sent pictures. I got the bow this week... It's a beautiful bow and a fine Hill, but I have to admit to being disappointed in that it is definitely a Hill, not a copy of the old Yorks and Pearsons. I guess I didn't communicate well enough what I wanted or Craig couldn't get that far away from the bow they build. In any event, I hope to try again sometime to get a modern Ol' Buck, but for now, this bow is here and shooting...

This bow is typical Longbowman's Choice construction... osage outer lams, bamboo inner lams and an accent lam of cocobolo. Riser and tips are cocobolo. It is 66" long and 45# @ 26". It has no shelf. One of the features of the old bows that I covered with Craig was their ability to be ambidextrous. I guess I emphasized that too much, as the bow came with tiny little leather arrow "references"... you can't call them shelves... on both sides. I myself am not ambidextrous, so I immediately removed the left hand one. It consisted of a tiny wedge of hard leather, taperen and inserted into the grip wrapping. Anyone who recieved a bow like this would have no problem duplicating the arrangement or moving it from one side to the other.

I figured that with the less centered riser/rest combination, this bow would need softer spined arrows, but it doesn't seem to be fussy. It shoots my regular wood 50 - 55 spined arrows fine. I did tend to move my secondary aiming point a bit to the right, but as you will see, it wasn't a problem. I also tried some Easton 1716's and I think it did like those a bit better.

I started shooting at 10 yards and it took two flights to get the feel of things, then I moved back to 15. This was the first 3 shots at 15! I ran in for the camera!	Unfortunately, after those three, things opened up a bit. This is the same target with the rest of the arrows available in it... a mix of the woods and the Eastons. This is still quite good for me. I was able to put a lot of shots into the yellow at 20 as well
Wow... D shaped... well, duh... it's a Hill	Longbowman's Choice broadhead inlay... study that striker plate and "rest"...
another closer view....	These next three shots show how Craig dealt with the "no shelf" issue... this is really quite nice... there is a leather stick on plate, and just a very thin wedge of leather stuck into the top of the grip wrapping. Works very well... you have a reference for setting the arrow, but you really do have to shoot off of your hand... just like when you were a kid...
Two top views...
Now, here's where it didn't come out as I had envisioned... on the left an old Pearson lemonwood, center is the new Classic and on the right is my regular Hill Longbowman's Choice. The riser measurements are: Regular Hill: 1.119" thick by 1.9" depth Classic: 1.077" thick by 1.87" depth Old Pearson: .88" thick by 1.69" depth Original York (not shown): 1.00 " thick by 1.6" depth Now all of that doesn't really sound like a lot of difference, but the difference in the feel of these bows in your hand is tremendous. The Pearson and the York and the similar bows of that vintage have a very unique and special feel. The Hills do too, but they're totally different. The new bow feels like a Hill. Unfortunately, as well as it shoots, I already have two dozen of those and wasn't really looking for another, but for something different. Perhaps I was being unfair to Craig in asking him to move so far from what they have spent a lifetime learning to make, or I just didn't communicate well enough..

1. keep the bow as is. Heck, it shoots fine, or sell it as is. However, that still leaves me with my original goal to be achieved

2. see if Craig wants to take another whack at it and, if so, send it back, along with the Pearson and see what happens. I'm not terribly inclined in this direction... it seems a lot of work to go to on a completed bow that's really just fine... only not what I had in mind... it would certainly require messing with the inlay and then redoing it, as well as refinishing.

3. send it back to Craig and just have him go ahead and cut a shelf into it, making it identical to my existing Longbowman's Choice, then sell one of them.

4. try to implement 3 myself, being VERY careful so that the work I do to put the shelf in will be covered by the new striker plate/shelf cover.

I'll have to make up my mind... meantime, I'm continuing to shoot the Classic. If I don't do 2. above, what I may do is take the Pearson to some shoots next year and talk with bowyers there, face to face, with the bow in hand until i find someone who says, "Wow, What a neat idea! I can do exactly what you want... It'd be a hoot!"

Update... went out with it again today... Brrr! Temp here was down to 34 degrees... made me glad I'm not an elk hunter! Also first effort shooting in a heavy coat... that was a bit different. Bow performed fine. I used the woods just because I like woods... guess I'm moving away from alums. Anyway, it definitely would prefer a lighter spined arrow... my aiming point at 20 yds was at 3 o'clock. However, I could still hit yellows with it. I had two real good groups (and a bunch of not so good). Funny part was that my bag is stuffed with heavy plastic wrap from boats shipped to the local boat dealer. In the cold, they stiffened up an a lot of arrows bounced out. Fortunately, most of the bounces were the bad shots, since the target center is pretty well chewed up. I think the bow has possibly earned a name... "Nockbreaker"... I've busted six nocks in two days. I have no idea if they were consective shots or just a matter of lots of arrows clustering, but it means work to do...

Two best 20 yard targets... sorry for the tiny pix... I had the camera in my pocket and in handling it, I apparently changed its setting to gif's.

Today I decided to approach the bow more scientifically. I test shot it with some aluminum test arrows and established that it does indeed prefer 1716 shafts... spine 40#, rather than the 50# spine woods I was shooting. So, that accomplished, I started from scratch at 5 yards to estblish new, specific secondary aiming points for this bow. No problem... got my 20 5x at 5 and at 10. The aiming points for this bow/arrow combination are different. At 15 yards, I was almost point on... holding just below the yellow... maybe down 6" from center. Here is the result... 7 arrows:

Then back to 20. I had a harder time establishing an aiming point here. It turned out to be somewhere in the top half of the yellow or maybe a bit higher, judging from this ...

I then went back to 25. I don't often try from there, but it felt right. the aiming point was definitely at the top of the yellow, or maybe up in the red, but I was much less consistent. Up to 20 I can mostly hold it together... at 25 and 30, every little error is so magnified it's easy to get discouraged. Here's the best I could do at 25:

So, clearly no problem with the bow... give it the right fodder and it will shoot, undoubtedly way better than I can. Whetehr it's quite what I had in mind or not, it's clearly a great bow.