X7 Eclipse, Size 1814

I love building wooden arrows. I don't mind exposing myself to MEK fumes to crest and seal them or spending 3-4 hours to compress the living daylights out of a wooden shaft that doesn't spin smoothly on my spin-tester or sorting arrows by spine. I actually like spending the time to build my arrows because I'm at my best when I shoot my blue and silver crested cedar arrows. Unfortunately, I don't have infinite time to build arrows, especially considering that I'm very hard on my arrows when I work on my accuracy and precision drills. Sometimes I hit my own arrows, sometimes I miss, and sometimes I hit an object that would shatter even an aluminum arrow. And sometimes someone at a shoot will hit arrow and shatter it. Carbon arrows are very costly and tend not to be very easy to repair. So I have to use something that will survive my shooting habits if I want to have time for all that I need to do. My shooting time got limited even more now that I've decided to incorporate a bit more of an exercise routine into my day after realizing that the dominant eigenvalue on my weight was pointing towards the path of exponential growth and it doesn't help that some of my professors want me to become sedentary. So I gave in and went back to a shafting material I thought I wouldn't return to because I had so much trouble re-straightening them and components got very finicky. Enter aluminum. Not the XX75 alloy I used to use like on the horrendous-looking Easton Jazz arrows (MIT purple... 'nuff said) but the X7 alloy, which is tougher and is built to tighter tolerances than I've seen on some carbons.

So far, I'm realizing that my accuracy and precision went down the toilet with these Easton X7 Eclipses, but it may also be from general lack of shooting time. These Eclipses are much lighter than my cedars or my CX Heritage 150s but I made sure they were still heavy enough to shoot safely through my trusty Chek-Mate Hunter I. As far as I'm concerned, my mate is a Chek-Mate -- a good huntin' bow is far better than the detritus I run into... the kind of detritus that wants to take away from my time to be alone, studying, or training to drag me into some hell-hole in the city and the kind of detritus that wants to interfere with my dreams and ambitions. I digress on that, but yes, I now have a set of nice aluminum arrows to serve as a back-up to my much-preferred cedars until I can get my next shipment and spend quality time turning these shafts into killer arrows for 3-D and possibly even hunting.

One major complaint I do have about my Eclipses is that finding inserts and points that actually fit them is a real pain in the arse! With my piddly 25" draw and 38 lb peak weight, I'm stuck using these really uncommon sizes to get the arrows to spine right at my draw length. Thankfully, I was able to use 1816 components in these 1814s, but even the 1816 parts were a bit hard to find! Another incentive for me to use wood as much as possible -- components are much easier for me to get my paws on, even if it does mean a lot of online orders! But yeah, as far as aluminum emergency arrows go, the Eclipses are pretty darned good, especially after years of bouncing back and forth between those god-awful Easton Jazzes and the relatively decent Platinum Pluses, Camo Hunters, and Game-Getters!