Some People Keep Pets, Others Keep Weapons...

I have yet to decide on a name for this beautiful little longbow from Four Winds Archery (based in Silver Springs, FL... just outside of Ocala), although originally I had thought to name this bow Undomiel (elvish for "Daughter of Twilight") until I looked at the nearly-complete bow last week. Then I knew that name just didn't fit, although three other possible names have come up from last week and they still stick in my mind after seeing the finished bow and practicing with it. The three names in my mind are: Sparrowhawk (inspired from watching the local kestrels hunting for small birds and large bugs), Irian (after one of the "were-dragons" in Ursula LeGuinn's Earthsea series), and Haitaka (the name given to Ged in Gedo Senki, the anime adaptation of Earthsea by Goro Miyazaki, I think it translates to "Sparrowhawk")

I did spend a bit of time trying to tune this one and after bruising myself pretty thoroughly even through the arm-guard in my efforts to find an optimal brace-height and spine/point combination given a set nock-point. I had prepared a set of bare shafts with points to do this some time ago and so far, it's still unclear what works best, although I eliminated the 5/16" 35-40 lb spined arrows after watching some serious fish-tailing (left-right oscillation). The 40-45 lb spined arrows seem to be working fairly well and I haven't worked with the 45-50 lb spined arrows yet. So far, given an arrow length of 28" (if I had more time, there's so much more I could do!), seems like a point weight of around 145-160 grains seems to work best, although I need to do a bit more of a thorough analysis. This also includes paper-tuning, which is watching how the arrow tears through the paper and the nature of the tear will say a lot about the arrow-flight and whether or not my points are too light/heavy and my shaft is too stiff/soft. Even with the challenge of tuning this one, I already can tell this one shoots extremely well -- very fast and smooth-drawing. I'll soon see what arrows fit it best once I can have some time to myself during daylight hours!