Red, White & Blue

There's always a lot of press surrounding the Olympics for gymnastics, water sports and even volleyball.  Very little is shown about archery, but I did dredge up a few photos that blow my mind.

Like this one.  If you look close enough, you can see that all of the arrows are in the gold center.  We call this clustering and it's awesome when you can do it.  And man can these people do it!  And they're doing it from a serious distance.

If you blow up this image (click on it), those tiny little white squares below the olympics 2012 logo are the targets.  Let me give you some stats. The archery targets are roughly 48 inches in diameter. The gold ring in the middle is only 4.8 inches in diameter (and worth a maximum of 10 points).  The athletes shoot form a distance of 229 feet.  Putting this into a bit more perspective.  In the small tournaments I've shot, I'm shooting from a minimum of (20 meters) 65 feet to a maximum of (60 meters) 196 feet.  I'm pretty good at 20 meters and can hit the target clustering near the center (but not in the center).   I'm lucky to get to hit the target at all at 60 meters.  In all fairness, I use a recurve bow and these guys are sporting compound bows which allow them greater distance, power and accuracy, but still.

These guys are awesome.  They're the US Men's team and they took the silver this year at the Olympics.

They make me super proud and inspire me to try harder!

Seriously.. Thoughts?

Arrow Making II

Well, we went back this weekend to finish up the arrow making process.  The only two things I still needed to do after the arrow had been sanded, nocked, painted, and sealed, was to add the fletching (or feathers) and points (the arrow tip).

In order to achieve this as fast as possible, they had a handy dandy 6 arrow fletching jig.  And man, does this beat putting the fletching on one at a time.  Now, some arrows have three feathers and some have four.  I really like the four feathered one better for a bunch of reasons I won't get into now, but just stick with me here.  Four is good.  That's 48 feathers being attached to 12 arrows with a 15 minute dry time per arrow.  You can see why a six arrow jig would come in handy.

It's really simple.  You insert the feather into this clip.  When you push on the ends, the clip opens up like a "chip clip" or similar.

They marked on theirs in permanent marker where the end of the feather should go, so all the feathers end up on the arrow aligned.  Very handy.

Then just add a good amount of glue to make the feather stick and slide the metal piece into the jig.  The weight of the metal pushes the feather down onto the arrow and helps it stick.  All very handy.

15 minutes later, the glue is dry, and you just have to turn those handy knobs at the bottom one click, and they're all perfectly lined up for the next feather.  HOORAY!

Pointing the arrow involves a torch. And since I'm not allowed to play with fire (being the blonde that I am) The Hubs did this part for me.  I don't have any pictures because well, I'm also not allowed NEAR the fire.  But it's pretty straight forward.  Heat up the arrow tip, heat up the glue.  Drip the glue inside the arrow tip, apply arrow tip and glue to the end of the arrow.  And viola.  Bob's your uncle.

So I now have 12 arrows all of my very own.  Made with my very own hands - except for the pointing because of the fire issue.  I'll try them out for the first time tomorrow and let you know how they fly.  Can't wait!!

Seriously.. Thoughts?

Arrow Making I

Today we spent about 7 hours making arrows.  Okay, we didn't finish, but we made a pretty big dent in the process.

I started sanding a dozen 5/16" diameter, Ramin wood arrows with two different kinds of fine sanding paper.  Not so much fun, but a necessary part of the process.  Once they were all smooth, I used a weight to straighten out the arrows.  Also, not so exciting, but good to do if you want your arrows to fly straight.  Then we got to the fun stuff!

I had to design the cresting for my arrows.  Cresting is the pretty colored pattern at the end of the arrow by the fletching (the feather part).  The only basic rules I got for this part, was that you want to pinstripe between colors with either silver, gold or black to make the colors pop.  You can use any color or colors you want.  Orange is apparently the least used color.  I don't like orange, so I didn't use it either.  Once you get your design drawn out (to scale) on paper, you can start to make it come together.

In my case, my very first color was blue.  The first thing you do is dip the arrow in that first color.  I'm sure there's a lot of good reasons for this, but typically, this is the biggest "section" of color in a cresting because you usually have it run the full length of the fletching (feather).  I chose blue because it's my favorite color.

Here's me dipping the end of one of my arrows. 

Then we hang them up on a make shift clothes line to dry.  The end is sharpened to fit the nock (the part that you put on the string of your bow), so don't mistake it for the arrow head end.

Then we add the nock with a little glue and then the rest of the painting begins.  We use a little motor that turns the arrows so that our lines are clean as we paint.

A steady hand is required here.  And patience.  I did all 12 arrows, doing two colors at a time.

Here's my finished arrow.  Remember that the big blue section on the right will have the fletching added.  The next color chunk is purple (hard to see in this shot - The Hubs took it, not me!), then a smaller section of red, then a small section of pink, and a small section of blue.  I took this opportunity to have my cresting represent the kids.  Purple is LW's favorite color, and she's the oldest by quite a bit.  She's 7 years older than GG so I made her section the biggest.  GG's favorite color is red, and her section is about half the size of LW's.  Then a much smaller section of pink for Bunny (of course) and blue for Bug.  I have no idea if blue is Bug's favorite color, but it's what I chose to represent him. 

I actually love how they came out.  I can't wait until tomorrow when I get to pinstripe between the colors with silver.  They should really stand out then!  I'm also hoping to put the fletching and arrow tips on them tomorrow as well.  I'll keep you posted.

Seriously.. Thoughts?

It's Official!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's OFFICIAL!

After completing our first royal round, I am a Bowman and The Hubs is a Yeoman in the SCA.

If you can't remember back to my post about scoring, this is how we're ranked:

0 - 24 Novice
25 - 44 Bowman
45 - 64 Yeoman
65 - 84 Forester
85 - 104 Bowmaster
105+ Royal Bowmaster

For a more detailed explanation see this post about a Royal Round.

The Hubs finished with a 55 putting him smack in the middle of the Yeoman and my final score of 33 puts me pretty much in the middle of Bowman.  In my defense, The Hubs was trained by the United States Marines as an Expert Rifleman.  My training, such as it was, was 9th grade archery class in high school for part of a semester.  I doubt they compare.

I do want to say that I've finally figured out why my aim was so far to the right.  Literally, I would be aiming several feet to the right of the target.  Now it's like starting to learn all over again, now that I've fixed this rather major flaw in my shooting.  I think this is what archery is going to be like for a while.  Figuring out technique as I go, and trying to get the best scores I can.  At least at last night's practice I managed to keep most of the arrows on the hay bale instead of a few feet behind or in front of it. So that's progress!

Seriously.. Thoughts?

Royal Round

If you have absolutely zero interest in archery, feel free to ignore this post.  This has been a public service announcement.  Thank you.

Sundays are our archery practice days.  We spend two hours to try to shoot our arrows into a target anywhere from 20 yards to 40 yards away.

Today we did something called a "Royal Round" which is the scoring technique used by the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) to rank all archers.

Yes, I'm one of "those" people.  We'll discuss that in another post.  But for now, roll with me here.

Here's how it works.  You shoot 6 arrows from 40 yards.  6 arrows from 30 yards.  And 6 arrows from 20 yards.  Then you shoot a "speed round" where you try to shoot as many arrows as you can in 30 seconds from 20 yards.  You add up your scores from each range (40, 30, 20 and the 20 yard speed round) to determine what your first "round" scores are.  You do this three times total, then take the average of the three scores.  What the average score is, determines where you rank.  Did you follow all of that? Anyone? Anyone?

This is what our targets look like.  For the white rings, you get 1 point.  For the  black rings you get 2 points.  Blue rings are 3 points.  Red rings are 4 points. And finally the gold rings are 5 points.  No extra points are awarded for getting a true bullseye, but man is it cool! 

The Hubs looks so hot when he's doing archery.  Why is that?

So, we did our first of three rounds today in practice.  I scored a 37.  The Hubs, of course, in his complete awesomeness, scored a 52.  If we were to assume those numbers were the averages from three rounds, The Hubs would be a Yeoman and I would be a Bowman.  For reference, our instructor is a Yeoman.  Not too shabby for our first round.

Score Rank
0 - 24 Novice
25 - 44 Bowman
45 - 64 Yeoman
65 - 84 Forester
85 - 104 Bowmaster
105+ Royal Bowmaster

Of course, those aren't averages, and we have two more rounds to shoot before we get our final placement.  But so far so good right?  We'll finish up our next two rounds hopefully next weekend.  The best part, once you reach a rank, you can never lose it.  So, if I have a miraculous day and somehow manage to become a Bowmaster, no matter how bad I shoot for the rest of my life, I will always have the title Bowmaster.  And let me tell you, it is a secret dream of mine to shoot that good one day.  Actually, in my dreams, I'm just one of those natural archers who is amazing from day one.  But since we've already proved that dream false, I had to shoot a little lower in my dreaming.

Get it? "Shoot" a little lower? I crack me up!

Seriously.. Thoughts?

Family Affair

Does anyone remember this show?  Bachelor Bill Davis, tries to raise his brother's kids, 15 year old Cissy and 6 year old twins Buffy and Jody with the help of his very English Butler Mr. French?  Man I loved that show.  Does anyone remember the name of Buffy's doll? Anyone? Anyone?

Mrs. Beasley!  I was totally in love with this show.  How come I didn't get to grow up with a Mr. French in my life? Mom? Dad? Are you reading?  Where was my Mr. French???

Of course, that's not what this post is about.  I'm just easily sidetracked and the minute I typed the title to this post, my mind raced back to those crazy childhood days.  Forgive me, for I am blond.  And you know how it is with blonds.

This post is really about archery, and how it's turned into.. wait for it.. a Family Affair.  Glamour Girl went to archery practice with us before she went to visit her mom.  And will join us again when she gets back.

Here's GG in all her archery glory.  She probably got a bulls eye.  She's annoying like that.

Our Lone Wolf joins us when she can, but her work schedule isn't very accommodating.  The real joy is when our Tweedles get into the game.  Let me preface this by saying we are enormously careful when we shoot with them around.  I have no desire to impale my children with arrows.  Well, mostly I don't.

I kid! I kid!

I think.

They have to stay behind us when we shoot.  One of them waits with eager anticipation for us to finish a round.

 One choose to spend her time a bit more constructively while we do our thang.

And they have to wait for us to tell them we're all done before they do this:

And someone gets a bit impatient when we don't run to the target like he does.

But you can't beat the help.

That's my arrow Bunny is pulling out of the bulls eye.  It is!  Why don't you believe me?
Okay, no it's not.  Mines are the ones above that Bug is picking up off the ground.  I'm lame.  Don't judge me.

Archery.  It's a Family Affair.

Seriously... Thoughts?

Kissed by the String

A few weeks ago, while I was at archery practice, I let the unthinkable happen.  I held my arm in such a way as to allow the string, upon release, to hit my arm.  I've heard this referred to as being "kissed" by the string.  Let me tell you, it doesn't feel like a kiss.  There's a lot of force behind that released string and it does NOT feel nice.

I took it cool though.  I glanced down at my arm, maybe winced ever so slightly and might have uttered the word "ow" under my breath.  Or.. I might have grabbed my arm, danced around going "ow ow ow" to anyone who would listen and wimpering like a baby.  The details are fuzzy though, so I'm sure I took it cool.

At the end of practice (2 hours later) I took this photo of my arm, and Santiago's arm.  Santiago is another student in this particular archery class, and he's constantly getting kissed by the string. Doesn't look like anything does it?  Just looks like a pasty white arm in the sun.  You have no idea the turmoil that was brewing just beneath the skin.

This is my arm a few days later.

And my arm a few days after that.

Yeah, archery is a brutal sport.  Not for the feint of heart.

Seriously... Thoughts?

Robin Hood?? Is that you?

Today was archery practice day.  We started archery practice three Sunday's ago and the fact that I can manage to get my arrows anywhere near the paper target is a miracle.  That's why we go to practice right? Despite my lack of proficiency, I love it.  I love the romance of it.. the medieval feel of it all.. the trees, the friends, the fun... the hope that Robin Hood will swoop out of the trees at any moment with Little John singing a diddy like in the Disney Movie.. but I digress...

Me on the far left.. with my 15 year old in the middle and my friend Joanne on the end.  Have I mentioned girls RULE!

Now.. the basics of archery are simple...

Get an arrow...
Use all your measly weakling strength to pull back the bow..

Now.. aim at that little target WAY over there...
And pray like the dickens you don't seriously embarrass yourself by putting your arrow in the dirt.

And I hit the bullseye and lived happily ever after.

All fairy tales should have a happy ending right?

Seriously... Thoughts?