New (to me) bow, but should I shoot it?

[kjsinnyc]

Hi everyone. Hope someone may be able to advise me about this.

I just got a bow, an old Bear 76er takedown, but I'm a little worried by it. The two limbs when not strung look identical to my eye, but when I string the bow I notice that one limb curves a little more than the other. The result is that the string is not perfectly perpendicular to the arrow shelf. Rather than a 90-degree angle it's probably more like 85 or 87 or so.

My questions are: Is this safe to shoot? If it is safe, will it merely result in a slight loss of energy to the arrow, or will it significantly effect arrow flight? And should I insist on returning the bow (I got it off E-bay--d'oh!)

Any advice will be gratefully appreciated. Also, I intend to use the bow for target shooting, not hunting. It's RH, 30#, length is 64" unstrung.

Many thanks!
Ken

[JOE PA]

First of all, these are pretty old bows that have very low performance for a recurve. I had mine chronographed a few years back, and it was doing a screaming 117 fps!

Mine has one limb that is a little weaker than the other one. I just put that limb on the top as often recurves or longbows have a little tiller built into them so the bottom limb is a little stronger. They are solid fiberglass limbs, and should be pretty durable. If the bow draws back with no creaking sounds, it should be safe to shoot. You may want to take it to an archery pro shop to have it checked out if it still concerns you. Good luck.

[kjsinnyc]

Thank you, Joe. I'll give it a whirl. I haven't shot a bow since I was a kid, and figured $50 wasn't too much to pay to get back into it. I'll do what you suggest regarding putting the weaker limb on top.

Thx.
k