Books - not just good for target practice, you can read them too!

There have been some great books and online recourses written recently on learning archery. These can be a great tool to remind and reinforce the lessons you’ve already been taught during our beginners couse and you'll learn a whole host new skills to help you become a great archer.

The following books are recommended for someone who has just started in archery hopefully after doing a progressive beginners course (see our courses page for current availability of our great weekend, 3 week ‘Fast Track’ or regular 5 week beginers courses in London Bridge). The best books at this level help you to develop a solid, consistent form without going into deeply technical variations on the standard elements of the shot sequence. All three of the following books provide a clear guide to building a good shot sequence and will help a novice archer achieve good consistent form.

Archery (Steps to Success): Kathleen Haywood (Author), Catherine Lewis (Author) 

This is a very good book for people looking for a structured way to become a solid archer. 

• Thorough - it's a very thorough book and doesn’t miss out anything that a novice archer needs to know.
• Easy to follow - provides an easy to follow program of exercises and provides space to record how well you have done on each exercise. A fun and interesting way to learn.
• Clear illustrations - good clear photos and drawings of each step to help you to conceptualise your body position.
• Bow tuning - a great section on basic bow tuning so you can get your bow up to speed at the same time as you improve your form.

Other good beginner books to try are:

Archery Fundamentals: A Better Way to Learn the Basics by Douglas Engh (Author)

Less rigidly structured than Steps to success, so is good if you prefer to structure your own training/learning your way.

The Archery For Beginners Guidebook by Archery GB (only available through archery stores, e.g. Clickers, Aim 4 Sport, Merlin etc)

Has a very good guide on archery etiquette and protocols in competitions and in clubs. 

The Following online sources can also be helpful:

KSL International Archery 

http://www.kslinternationalarchery.com/Technique/KSLShotCycle/KSLShotCycle-USA.html

This has a very good shot sequence. It's brief in its description but is free to look at so worth a read. It does get pretty technical though. 

Archery Interchange http://www.archeryinterchange.com/forum.php

A very popular UK archery forum, this can be a useful recourse for answering specific questions. Although do bear in mind that as it’s a forum there is often lots of arguing that can be distracting and confusing. The loudest voice is also not necessarily the most accurate!

These are the ones that I particularly favour but there are many more useful resources out there. Do let us know if you have any other recommendations that you've found useful on your archery journey!

Roger - 2020 Archery Instructor

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Josie : how to build / fletch arrows

Today I'm taking you through the first of this year's major archery purchases: new arrows.

A lovely line of lovely shiny points

The arrow choice was made on advice - taking the jump from aluminium X7 to carbon is a significant step that can be costly. Considering the likelihood of upgrading limbs one can't expect arrows to be well-matched to increased poundage, so it made sense not to spend a small fortune on arrows I may not use for that long. Luckily, Roger was on hand to recommend Carbon Express as an excellent alternative to Easton. I went with Medallion XR on the basis that the shafts and components came to under £140 for a dozen arrows, so not too big a deal if I need to upgrade them in six months. 

It's the first time I've assembled arrows so there was a bit of a learning curve. Luckily, several experienced archers are a short hop away on email so advice was never far away.

Let's get on with assembly. First, I cleaned the shafts and inside each end with isopropyl alcohol. Then I fitted the nock inserts. I used Dragon Spit for these, seemed like a reasonable idea. Before gluing, make sure all the shafts are the same way around or the writing will go different ways on your arrows! 

Newly fletched arrows

Next came the points. When it comes to points, there are many different fixatives recommended and it's a little confusing. Would hot-melt be better than epoxy? Do you need to use an "archery" glue or will a bog-standard hardware glue work just as well? Can you get away with super glue or another cyanoacrylate instead? I couldn't decide so I asked Roger - given his experience building and mending arrows it's fairly safe to assume he knows what he's talking about. He recommended hot-melt so I went with that.

The points themselves were quite easy to fit, but I did find a couple of snags which can be avoided. Firstly, when working with hot-melt you have only the "hot" window in which to work with the glue before it goes off. As such, putting it on to a cold tip will decrease working time significantly. I heated the tips with a heat-gun until they were quite warm but still able to be held. With my first point, I inserted it too slowly and the tip got stuck halfway, so I heated the shaft gently for a couple of seconds until the glue had softened enough to push the rest of the point in, which worked perfectly.

Now for the pin-nocks. These aren’t really any harder to assemble than G-nocks (which I have on my X7s), but the metal pin insert serves the added purpose of protecting the end of the shaft from direct hits. The nocks push onto the nock pin but are not glued: it's a tight fit when they're on so they don't need to be. I like to get things just right, so I positioned the nocks so that the arrow text is perfectly aligned down the side of the arrow when the arrow is at full draw. Makes it look so much more professional… 

The trickiest part (for me) was fletching. I think I used too much glue on this first batch – getting the exact right amount eluded me. Too much is a bit messy and too little will not stick well enough. For reference, a blob of glue at each end of the vane will also help stop the vanes coming detached at the weakest part. It was the first time using my fletching jig so I had to set the alignment for the arrows I was fletching, but this was straightforward and didn't take more than a minute or so. Fletching a dozen arrows takes time - every vane has to be glued, positioned and allowed to set for a couple of minutes before then removing the clamp and rotating to the next position. It's very "on-off" work so good to do whilst doing something else (cooking, watching TV or even at your desk at work if you have a forgiving boss!). 

This is my first arrow build so I don't yet know how they will shoot. I'll add a comment when I've tested them! Let’s hope they don’t disintegrate on impact…

I’m sure there are some other tips which will help fletching/arrow building, would anybody like to add any?

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