Some of the pultruded carbons worked well, especially if you got the ones spined heavier than what you were shooting for poundage, I shot AFC 2300's for a few seasons out of my hunting setups with great results back in the late 80's and early 90's.

That being said, I can tell you why they are now pretty much obsolete, and that is due to the fact that the spine will go out of them much more quickly than a comparable carbon arrow shaft that is biased-wrapped. (fibers going both ways) The pultruded design only allows fibers to run longitudinally, (length of the arrow shaft)and by doing this the individual fibers have a greater chance to all bend together, and it was discovered that this happened on numerous occasions in all conditions, and is the direct reason why the pultruded arrows were eventually upgraded. I lost a regional tournament in 110 degree heat because the spine went completely out of TWO AFC 2100's while shooting them. I mean these arrows went completely sideways when they came out of the bow, and one floated over the top of the target, and the second hit the target sideways! I had been running a good score until both incidents happened and the bow was correctly tuned and the arrows correctly spined. Upon inspection it was found that the fibers along the high spine had weakened on some of the previous shots, and then simply "went south" in the heat. I saw and heard of many more incidents such as this happening during that time period.

Moral of the story: There is a reason why they faded out and were upgraded to the biased designs we see today. This is not to say that a heavier pultruded will not work in hunting applications where you will not be taking thousands of shots with them, and the penetration exceeds any other shaft I've shot to date, but it is just not worth the extra worry to me not knowing whether they will stand up or not at a critical moment, already having fell to this issue on a previous occasion. Just something to chew on. Good shooting, Pinwheel 12





Edited by - Pinwheel 12 on 01/23/2003 11:59:59