Primitive Bow Shooting Help

[UrbanDeerSlayer]

I am shooting a bamboo backed/osage 45# primitive bow, no shelf. Arrow flight is terrible. Although the arrow will hit the target where I am aiming, arrow flight is erratic, with the tail wagging left and right. There is no center cut, shooting off the hand with 1716's. I do not believe it to be an arrow spine issue as I had to find weak arrows to shoot to compensate for being way left of center(I'm right handed). Also I get super arrow flight when I shoot my recurve with center cut shelf. I'm at a loss. Maybe its my release which may have to be perfect when shooting the primitive bow. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

[ripforce56]

I have a 40@28 hickory selfbow, I put a shelf on mine, but it is still real touchy on spine, mine always shot left, so I kept going down in spine till I got the proper arrow flight that worked, I mainly shoot POC woods out of mine!I have been told that self-bows require a spine alot closer to the poundage and draw weight  of the bow as opposed to laminated modern designs!

[gringol]

I don't know much about aluminum shafts, but I suspect that things will be much better for you with woodies.  rip is right about the spine, you'll need a spine that's very close to your draw weight.

This might be a better topic for the Pow Wow forum...

[Davesea]

What is your draw length and length of the arrow?

[UrbanDeerSlayer]

27 DL. Arrow length 29.5. I'm going to bareshaft some different field points later to rule out spine issues. Yesterday I had it hitting on target but still had erratc flight with side to side tail wsggle.

[Davesea]

Might be a clearance frequency issue (see below rference).  The length of the arrow may need to be adjusted to change the frequency?  You have some room to play with in length so I would shorten some up and see if they fly differently?

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~archery/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/KNSU-paper-by-Lieu-version4.pdf

[UrbanDeerSlayer]

Wow thats some heavy duty info at Berkeley, thanks Davesea.  When I have some time I'm going to read through that for sure, seems pretty technical.   Anyhow, shot the 1716's all the way up to my heaviest tip, 200g and the tail waggling is almost gone.  If I had a 225 or 250g, I think it would have been eliminated. So it looks like my spine was too stiff.  Still seems like it should be too weak but it's not. I'm figuring this would be the same is shooting a 25# wood arrow at 29" with a 125g tip? Seems odd.

[Davesea]

Tony, the paper gets technical, but the bottom line is, an arrow can be tweaked so it clears the riser.  You might try your original point and change the length of the shaft to keep it from bouncing off the riser.