Another "Help the dumb guy"

[Trushot_archer]

What effect does arrow length have in relation to accuracy. I've heard overdraws and shorter arrows are a little touchier to shoot but still can't understand why?? Pointed straight is pointed straight no?

[Mike from Texas]

An overdraw mones the "pivot point" further back towards your hands which mulitplies any torque that you induce on the bow. If you have good form and a torque free grip, then you shouldn't have any problems. In essence it creates an artificial shorter brace height.

[KBacon]

Overdraw severely magnifies any movement/torque you have in your wrist. These were very popular in the late 80s-90s when aluminum arrows were your only choice to get the weight down/speed up. I used to shoot an 80# PSE Carroll Intruder w/ an overdraw and 26" 2213s w/ 7% nibbs and 3" feathers to get the arrows down to 5 gr/lb limit... That's what you had to do to have a "fast" bow (315 fps)... there were several people that would shoot way lighter than that before the 5gr/lb rule was implemented and enforced...

w/ the advent of the newer lighter carbon arrows.. you're able to shoot much lighter arrows that are still full length... so they've more or less made the overdraw obsolete.

[c903]

There are shooters who support that an overdraw w/shorter arrows shoot as well as a standard setup, and there are shooters who say that his or her accuracy went to pot. I used an overdraw for one year and ended up on the "pot" list.

For me, tuning was always routine and simple. However, I found that tuning with an overdraw was a bit more aggravating. When shooting the OD bow, I found my bow too sensitive to the slightest inexactness in form and/or release.

I also ditto "Mike from Texas" on the pivot point aspect. May not end up being scientifically factual, but the pivot point issue + torque is one I considered when I used an OD and shorter arrow.

[JeffB]

IME shorter arrows (regardless of overdraw use or not) are less stable. I don't shoot anything less than 28" these days even though on many modern bows and rests with my 29" draw length I could shoot 27" or shorter arrows.

As an example....lets consider a Javelin...

Would you rather have one that is 4 to 5 feet long or one about 2 feet long? (even if weight and velocity remained the same).

Which would be more stable when considering planing/drift, etc?