Do you Cant an English Longbow? 

Hi Keith. Thank you for your comment. I agree, knock position is definitly an indicator of spine! This is something I failed to mention. However It does also cause drift in either direction. I can demonstrate this to you if we ever meet. At 70m I can aim in the centre with correctly spined arrows but the same spine and weight arrow cut to 3/4" shorter (dynamically now a stiffer arrow) will impact 50cm to the right of centre when aimed in the same place. Shooting off hand with primitive style bows makes spine matching with wooden shafts difficult, and often as a beginner to arrow making and traditional archery people often end up with arrows that behave in this way and many can overcome this by leaning or string picture. I would argue this holds true due to the amount of people who respond yo this method, and my own experince with it from distances from 5-90m. Likewise, i can achieve different arrow placements on the target with different degrees of bow lean/ arrow spine both with my English Longbow and American flatbow. I haven't tried it with a centre shot bow so i can't comment from experince there but i am confident in my comments regarding it's influence when shooting longbows/flatbows.

@@how2longbow455 I predominantly shoot various recurve bows, three cut 1/8 past centre and the other three cut to centre and hence are more spine tolerant. My 68" AFB is cut plus 1/8 to centre. I shoot carbon and wood arrows that are 31.5-32" which I tune. The only time that I have found left/right placement is when the spine is too soft and the nock strikes the shelf wall due to the reflex node of the nock end occurring before it has cleared the shelf. Or I have done a bad release. I will add that I bare shaft my shafts at 10, 15 and 20 yards. Six of my bows all draw between 50-57#. So I build 400 spine Easton powerflights with 145grn piles and 5" fletchings. My wood arrows are spruce, 32", 11/32", 70# spine, 125grn piles and 52" fletchings and all work well across 6 of my bows. incidentally, I shoot trad field and 3D and so sod the 70yard butts, at that distance I have to use "The Force" lol. Our chat is the same as at the club, ask 20 archers a question and you will get 20 different opinions lol. I must say though, your arrow spine choice does sound weak...and I bet they are 5/16 shafts.

@@keithbaker3405 the joys of traditional archery is the 101 differences of opinion/results 😁. I must admit I no longer make arrows for my ELB. I get them made now and they tend to be barrelled 11/32 to 5/16 at the front and 9/32 at the back. For my light weight 40lb elb (the one I think I'm holding in the video) my latest set are 5/16 shafts down to 1/4 at the nock cut to my tiny 27" draw length. But i do have a super long set, 50-55spine 11/32 that fly perfectly out of that bow. But as long as i know where to aim a given set it doesn't bother me :) It's my flatbow that's been giving me the biggest headache with arrows . My 68" AFB, 45lb. 45-50 with a few inches over length seem to come out straight but anything else higher or lower flaps around fierce (all 11/32, except some old elb sets I have tested). Alot of my flatbow friends are shooting a spine atleast 10# over draw weight but something about me or my bow is keeping me on a lighter spine 😅 Is your draw length 32"? And how do you get on bareshafting woods? I witnessed a friend bareshafting woodies from a recurve and the spine must have been too far out as they were snapping as they were entering the target

@@how2longbow455 Indeed...those 5/16-1/14 must surely be too weak IMO. When I came back to archery after 45 years 95% of all the arrow building info I was given by club members for wooden shafts was wrong. It took me 3 months of trial, error and studying to get anywhere near good. I am cursed with a very long draw length (split finger, ring finger to the corner of my mouth, index between my cheekbone and nose) of 31 1/4" I can just feel the back of the pile touch my finger. So now I don't cut shafts and because I am a cheapskate this limits me to 311/2" carbons and 32" spruce, so I tend to use heavy spined shafts and weaken the spine by adding pile weight. I bare shaft my wood shafts as I do carbons, I use taper threaded piles and take a selection to my range and test them at 10,15,20 yards, if the nock points left they are too weak and so I reduce pile weight. Your friends shafts are probably too weak and probably too thin. I find the biggest problem people have is that they buy the pounded spine to match what it says on the bow. Google "Henry Bodnik's Spine Table For Wooden Shafts".....awww sod it, here is the link www.bearpaw-blog.com/the-right-spine-for-wooden-shafts/ ...it will amaze you just how much too light a spine wooden shaft people shoot! I use Shire Archery for my spruce shafts, he is a good old boy and weight matches the shafts at no extra cost. The only downside is the last time I looked he only sold 70# shafts and so my arrows can be slightly weak! Be it carbon or wood all my arrows are similar, 3x5" fletchings (right wing with a 3 degree helical offset), woods are 32"x11/16" 125grn and my carbons are 400 spine x 311/2" with 145grn pile or 350 spine with 175grn pile and again, fletched the same(I am a believer in heavy, high FOC arrows as they hold more kinetic energy and the nock has to follow the arrow...I want the dog wagging the tail, not the tail wagging the dog). Some people say to me "why shoot such heavy arrows?", my answer is, Get a ping pong ball and a golf ball...what can you throw the furthest?". That normally gets them thinking for the most part, but then I also get the die hards who insist that a micro shaft arrow with an 80grn pile and a total arrow weight of 400grn is the future! Oh and also don't forget, you can also tune you bow to the arrow by increasing or decreasing the brace height. A higher brace height will impart less energy into the arrow and stiffen the arrow while a lower brace height imparts more of the bows energy into the arrow and weakens it.

Hi! The bow i have here is made by Gary Evans. it is an artisan longbow, 4 lamination bamboo, ipe, purpleheart, lemonwood. its 42# @28. the arrows shown are 50-55 spine bearpaw spurce, full length 32". with 100gn tophat 3D piles, 4" gateway batwing fletchings with aae nocks.

@@how2longbow455 many thanks!