Out of Curiosity......("FF" strings)
 

Has anyone ever seen, or heard of, or even had it explained to you, how a "FF" string can cause a bow to delaminate?

I asked for some facts on a different board, but evidently none can be offered.

I honestly don't know. The majority of bows I've seen fail, and the ones that failed with personal friends, either did it with a dacron string or on the first pull.

When a bow has a FF type string on it and it fails, the "knee jerk" reaction is to blame the string. I dare say that at least as many, and probably a lot more, bows have failed with non FF strings on them--so what gets the blame for those?

On the other hand, lots of bows have been shot for years and years with FF strings on them. Some folks are using FF strings on old bows (I don't suggest doing this) with no apparant ill effects. What makes one go and the other blow?

Another thing--one way to "tame" a bow with a lot of hand shock is with a FF type string. How can less shock be harder on the bow? Seems to me the opposite would be true, but I'm no bowyer so maybe I'm missing something here.

Hoping I can get some information on this here, or at least not get attacked over it. Took about 10 seconds on the other board before I got accused of saying things I didn't. Oh well....

Too fast for the tip overlays. When the tips fail, the lams pull. I make all my bows with tip overlays that will support ff stings, but i never use ff materials.. The little extra speed is negated by my heavy shafts. I have used dacron for years and do not plan on changing any time soon.

Never heard that before--that's an interesting theory.

I don't think speed has anything to do with it though. We're talking about an average of 5 fps or less difference on average, maybe 15 fps on the extreme side. You'll get more than that by switching from a guy with a 25" draw length to a guy with a 32" draw length--a lot more. Bows don't blow up just because someone has a longer draw.

On top of that, the speed gain is primarily because the HMPE string is more efficient--the difference in speed with the limb tips is very slight. We're talking grains of difference in string weight.

HMPE (FF type) materials don't turn a VW into a dragster. My theory on hand shock is this:

Hand shock is energy from the limbs not transferred to the arrow. It travels down the limbs to the riser and to your hand. Less efficient strings impart more hand shock, as do lighter arrows. HMPE materials are more efficient than dacron, so they impart less shock. Won't mean a lot to most recurve shooters (although I have shot a couple of recurves that were as bad as any longbow I've ever shot), but it will to a lot of longbow shooters--some designs, coupled with featherweight risers, can tear up an arthritic elbow.

Usually the slowest bow has the most shock: i.e. a lot of Jerry Hill longbows, the Martin Stick and Twig, straight limbed Hill and Hill style bows, etc. Tiny tips on some, but lots of shock. Usually it can be calmed down with a HMPE string.

That's my experience to date. The other thread had calmed down quite a bit, but seems to have dissapeared. Oh well....

That thread is back, but my last post is gone and it's locked. So much for honest debate and sharing ideas....

Counter productive to fuss over what admin at other sites do.

I don't think bows delaminate because of the type of string material, if I understand your meaning. When I think of delam, I think of the glass separating from the inner (wood) layers, more the inner wood layers tearing apart themselves. The former usually because of glue or fit failure, the latter frequently because of too much strain (or stress, I get them mixed up), usually in shear forces (where the lams move or attempt to move parallel to one another).

A bow don't know what kinda material the string is made of, strings don't break bows. Linen is both less mass and less stretch than Dacron, less than the new FF+ material I think. It's been used for millenia, and much preferred for these reasons. But a bow knows if the string has less stretch than it can handle, or (in combination w/ the arrow) less mass than it can handle.

Chad you can spend a decade, as you have and more, investigating this question with run of the mill folks on the internet, and you'll learn a whole lot more about the nature of men than the nature of bows and string material. Sorry to say this, but the "simple stick and string" is a misconception. Fact is, at least in terms of the down and dirty math, bow-n-arrow is a damned complex thing to model. Consequently, not much info is available mass market. The fllight shooter boys, over at paleo mostly, have got some computer models (spreadsheets) that do a fair job. String mass and elasticity can be "plugged in" to get an idea of how it influences the rest of the system, in terms of strain, performance, etc. But I'll warn you (having read older stuff from Kooi via Tapley) the math side will break your brain.

Other than for entertainment provided by interacting with others, little can be gained/learned from laymen. Sorry to sound such as arse. I'm not really. Hell I AM a layman, in these terms. But I am speaking from direct, personal experience, having done my decade too.

You make a lot of sense David, and I appreciate your input.

I know I was grasping at straws, but I really would like to know if anyone has done any kind of testing, and what the results were.

I couldn't remember if it was silk or linen--thanks for the refresher. I believe it has as little, maybe less, stretch as any of the FF type materials, but nobody blames it for blowing up bows.

I guess I just ask for too much. I thought that surely, as much as people proclaim without a doubt the evils of "Fast Flight" on traditional bows (especially older ones), surely someone had actually bothered to verify something.....ANYTHING.....pertaining to their steadfast declarations. After reading some of the claims made by a few so-called "icons", I should have known better.

I realize people have had old bows "blow up" while using "Fast Flight" strings. I dare say many more have "blown up" with linen, silk, dacron, etc. The only thing I can honestly garner from that is that bows sometimes break.

I'm not going to look for a flight shooting site....math makes my brain itch and my bowels irritable.....:bash:

I had a FF string on an old "zipper". The overlays were wood and fiberglass. I was getting cracking around the top. Bill Dunn, said FF did it. It confused me. I told him I shot well over 3-4K shots with FF on that bow. He said I was lucky. I ended up grinding off the wood/glass, and putting phenolic on.

I myself don't see how padded ff can cut thru a lam.

ff string damage is tip damage. Tip damage leads to limb damage. I know when I build a bow for a person using ff strings, there are only a few tip materials I can use. Wood tips will not support a fast flight string. Seen lots of people screw up bows with ff strings on wood overlays. I have fixed many, personally.

Which is what makes this question so perplexing, contradicting testimonials from credible sources.

I've put new new overlays and string grooves on perhaps a dozen glass bows. Some from scratch projects, some rehab jobs. Never used phelonic, only glass and wood, usually wood as the last or top layer.

I have an old Bobby Lofton bow I shortened, piked, and re-tillered. I used elm on top of the existing (looked like .040) clear glass. No worries. Bow is mid 50s at 30", shoots like a house afire compared to typical production mild r/d bows, especially Bobby's run of the mill bows.

As importantly, in my view, I've made dozens of self bows, up to 70#, of woods as soft as yew (althought that bow only 50#) on up as hard as ipe and osage. Rarely use an overlay, even on boo backed, never had a problem.

It can drive a person to madness, because I refuse to take the easy way out by assuming the contradicting antecdotes not credible. But I certainly can't account for the vast differences in experiences.

I tend to fall back upon the theory we aren't really comparing equally in some way, that my experience is subtlly differnent than others. For example I rarely shoot less than 8 grains per pound, rarely shoot over 70#. But I do draw a full 30", and on bows optimized for cast, r/d longbows as short as 60" and use reasonably low mass, low stretch strings, 12 to 14 strand FF, d97, 6 to 8 strand 450+, etc., even linen. And I'm very meticulous about how I design and shape string grooves.

The thing about the flight shooter boys is, they don't mess around about working within the limits of the bow. They run right up to edge of the envelope, and frequently beyond. If they don't know what breaks bows, unlikely yer average 10 gpp hunter, setup with a 400 grain string for "quietness" is gonna stumble on any epithany they haven't already exercised thoroughly. Very uncommon to have an experienced flight shooter scapegoat a string. Rather they tend to accept they've crossed the line in terms of (bow) materials capacity and/or bow design, because their purpose is to use as little string and arrow mass as they can, designing bows accordingly and literally breaking bows occasionally, frequently breaking strings, to find that fine line.

No question a bow string can tear out string grooves. But I don't think you can accurately, fairly, lay all that at the feet of the string material. Rather the size and shape of the string grooves makes all the difference. From an engineering point of view, a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. Similarly, if you concentrate forces, for example with improperly shaped grooves, stress will exploit that condition... to failure in extreme cases.

I understand what everyone is confused about.

I know when Bill from zippers saw I had a FF string on, he was really alarmed and told me to immediately quit using that string. He asked how many times I have shot that bow with FF on. I expalined 3-5K shots.


I think bill knows what he is doing, but the proof was in the pudding. I shot lots of shots with FF and the glass just began to crack. It could have cracked with dacron.