Ep. 93: The Killing End of the Stick!
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Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance. Today, I'm joined by my good friend, Bill Vander Hayden. He's back on the show. He is the founder and owner of Iron Will Broadheads. I like him. He's an engineer. And because of that, I love that he spends a lot of time and his energy researching what works, why it works, can it be improved on, all of that stuff that us engineers kind of end up nerding out on. I find cool. And I feel that if I can make that connection from the engineering side,

back to the hunting side and then kind of figure out how that works with real world results, right? Like one thing, and I'm sure Bill can attest to this, like you get taught in school or in college

you know, everything out of this book is cookie cutter, but then they, they, you know, I had some professors always say like, don't let your, your studies or your book Trump, what happens out in the real world. Right. So, uh, there, there's this thing as an engineer where it's like, yeah, all this, this book tells us all these cookie cutter solutions, but yet take what's happening out in the real world over all that. So, uh,

In hopes today, we're going to talk about broadheads, arrows, flight, all that. And then I'm going to ask Bill a lot of questions on like, this is what the science says, or this is what the engineering or the physics say. Have you found that's what works out in the field? And then how is that translated to real world results? So I'm excited about this one. We've had Bill on the podcast, I believe, once if not twice before, and always enjoy our conversation. So welcome to the show, Bill. Hey, thanks, Jason. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I'm looking forward to the discussion today.

Yeah. So last time we touched on it, I think you were a year through the study at the University of Colorado. You've been kind of...

heading that up, can you kind of give us an update on that? I know you were looking at, you know, arrows, weights, veins, you know, uh, you know, drag wind drift kind of, it's a, it's a big question, but if you can maybe just kind of give us a breakdown on what's come out of that study in the second year or any new updates and, and, and really how it affects us as a hunter choosing broadheads, arrow vein setups, you know, anything that really matters.

Yeah. Yeah. And the reason for this study is, you know, for bow hunting, there's really two things that are very important, maybe equally important. That's good arrow flight, getting to the animal and then penetration through the animal once you get there. And I feel like there's, there hasn't been good scientific studies. Um, there has been on the target archery side. Um, there's good, there's good papers and research there, but not so much when you put a broadhead on the front, that arrow flight's much different. Um,

And then also, you know, trying to maximize that momentum in a straight line through the animal and have low force to penetrate. All that is also very important on the hunting side. You know, so I spent a lot of years developing a broadhead to get max penetration through an animal. But I felt like it was the...

The aero flight side was kind of missing. At least, you know, there's a lot of anecdotal evidence out there. You know, I tried this and this happened, but there's not good engineering experiments. Like, you know, as an engineer, you know that when you do it, you set up an experiment.

an experiment as an engineer, you do, you know, lots of repeats, lots, um, you know, you set it up in such a way so that you can look at the variability and then really make statistically significant, um, decisions there on one design point, maybe better than another. So I knew there was a lot of opportunity there for improvement. Um, and I've been a adjunct instructor of mechanical engineering at the university of Colorado for several years as one of the faculty directors for the senior design project class, um,

So the last two years, I sponsored, my company sponsored the projects and I directed them, really focusing on improving Aeroflite,

for bow hunting, you know, improving arrow flight with fixed blade broadheads on the front. And this involved a lot of computer modeling, you know, fluid dynamic modeling of full arrows with broadheads on the front veins on the back. And, you know, how do they act in flight when they're going, you know, going straight, maybe they're tipped a little bit as if your bow is a bit out of tune. Um, and we looked at accuracy, stability, drag, spin up, uh,

wind drift and sound. So, you know, we learned some things about all those and just maybe wanted to touch on

a number of those things that could help people improve their arrow flight for, for bow hunting. Yeah. So let me ask a question and this is me not being a mechanical engineer. You're going to, you're like, Oh, this guy's definitely a civil engineer when I start to ask these, but you look at things that are built to fly, you know, if it's a regular dart, you know, you got a very sharp point. You look at a plane, it's a very sleek point. Wings are on the back, you know, all the stabilizing is on the back and you look at our, our, our, our, um,

you know, our target point arrows, once again, very sleek on the front. You have all your steering on the back, how much, or maybe you don't have this number, but as my understanding is when you start to put, you know, a fixed blade or blades out front, you've now got the ability for the wind to basically, if that thing isn't flying perfectly, uh,

perpendicular or you know perpendicular to the plane that is traveling you start to get some side force and that's really what causes these major issues between shooting my my field point where it's not near as important versus now i've got a broadhead that now has the ability to steer from the front the part that should be cutting the area or the air is now being pushed at um on a side and then it's it's up to those veins to over control is that a is that a

accurate or is there more to it than that or is that really what's kind of going on yeah that's and that's really kind of the biggest factor is the air stability so with the field point like you mentioned with the field point you know it's very very you know small streamlined if you have veins on the back of any size nearly any size um the arrow becomes very stable

And the problem that often happens is when you put a broadhead on the front, and this could be a mechanical broadhead that's just has a longer ferrule and some exposed blades, or maybe a standard broadhead might be a little bit more unstable. And then you get to like a very large wide blade broadhead, which would be more unstable yet. And it's that aerostability that then

translates to accuracy when things aren't perfect. So that was probably the top factor in this study is understanding how to get better accuracy stability when you have fixed plate heads on the front. Because like you said, if the arrow, say the arrow comes out of your bow and it's tipped, you know, tip tail left, you have that airflow hitting kind of left side of the arrow. And up front, you know, it's hitting the blades on the left side. It's going to want to push it off to the right.

Um, your center of mass is kind of the pivot point there. The airflow across the left side of the veins in the back is going to have some force and, you know, it's technically it's called lift force, but in this case, it's not up. It's just perpendicular to the flow. Yeah. So, um, just for definitions there.

Force in line with the flow is drag force and force perpendicular is a lift force. So you've got this lift force at the back pushing it back on course or restoring it. And that distance from the center of mass back to the veins, that distance times the force kind of gives you a torque that's going to rotate it back on target.

Um, and then at the front, that force on the blades, pushing it off times that lever arm to center mass is a torque pushing it off. So yeah, a lot of this study, we have a couple of papers we've published now on our website, but it'll talk about restoring torque with different vein designs and you want that restoring torque to be high. So if it comes out, say tail left, it very quickly straightens it back out, points it towards the target, uh,

And it greatly improves accuracy. And I think that's what's been missing. And a lot of the reasons I wanted to do this study is to show the physics and then the modeling and then also the empirical testing. You know, we've got over 2,400 shots now out of a shooting machine where we've recorded velocity with a

Lab radar, we've looked at with a high-speed camera, the arrow coming out, spinning up and stabilizing. And those are two different things, by the way, spin up and stability, and we'll talk about that more. And then also shot over microphones, recorded sound. But we've got 2,400 shots of empirical testing to kind of verify the modeling. But yeah, that stability is a huge factor for having good accuracy with broadheads.

A quick question for you. I know, and you'll probably correct me. I assume like an iron will technically is a four blade broadhead, but it really has one. It's I'm going to, you're probably going to be like, Jason, I wish you wouldn't talk about this, but it's, it's basically a large two blade broadhead with bleeder blades to make it a four. So it's,

With that said, did you guys test other manufacturers, three blade or four blade heads to see if that side force is less? Because basically you're not pushing on one large blade versus like a, a symmetrical three or four blade versus your guys's four blade. If that makes any sense, did you do any testing to see if, if that force is less or, or just some kind of, um, yeah, just some kind of screening testing early, early on. And, and,

And three, three blade versus two blade. So I'd call ours a two blade with bleeders. All right. Some people might call it a four blade, but yeah, it's it doesn't vary. It's a similar issue, whether you have, you know, a two blade, two blade with bleeders, a three blade or four blade, all of those create some lift when there's some angle of attack, you know, when the arrow is tipped to the, to the airflow, they all create some lift. And, and,

It can, it can vary, but it's more of a, it'll, you know, the, the size of it certainly is a factor, but then also just the, the geometry, like, you know, so I designed iron wheel broadheads using fluid dynamic modeling to kind of minimize the drag. You know, I want that flow to go out around the blades and then come back together, you know, and there's, so there's bevels on the back edges of the blade and it's, it's kind of streamlined to minimize drag. And so that's,

There's some three blades that have flat backs to the blades and also have some steps down in the ferrule that have very high drag where this condition is actually worse. They're more unstable from that. So it's hard to say a two blade versus a three blade and to make like general conclusions.

statements like that it more depends on the geometry and the drag of the broadhead itself and that's very geometry dependent yeah and then recovery torque does it is it better do you recover quicker on like a longer arrow getting like the the mass out front and your your veins you know further back or is a shorter arrow recover faster not that it really matters you're kind of stuck with your own arrow i was just curious if you found that like a longer arrow recovers quicker or slower yeah um

So, you know, increasing FOC can help it restore quicker because you got a longer lever arm to the back, to the veins and a shorter lever arm to the front. I'm not an extreme FOC guy, but it's the reason why I don't recommend like a low FOC, like heavy arrows, you know, heavy arrows with a hundred grain points.

15 grain inserts, 16 grain inserts. Um, they often have F F O Cs that are down in that 10% or even less. I don't recommend that it's, it's more likely to be unstable. Um, I like them. I like to be over 12% on a hunting arrow. You know, I think 12 to 16% is typically the range that I can hit having a fairly long draw and a longer arrow. Um, but I don't see a need to go extreme on that, you know, up to, you know, 20% range either, but yeah, that can help. And, um,

My head's already spinning to ask you a bunch of questions in extreme, like,

you know, the veins, you're probably going to touch on it. Maybe I'll just save that question. I always like to think of the extremes. Like if we didn't have all the constraints on getting like large veins by our rests and all of these things that, you know, if you were to just shoot as large a vein as possible, like, can you stabilize that real quick? And could you overcome that versus like you're within the constraints of what we'd consider a hunting vein that needs to clear your shelf, your rest, your, you know, all of that, like how much, how important is that? Could we design a vein that would work better than what's available, but

It may be louder. It may, you know, put extreme drag on, you know, all of these things. And it's probably not practical, but, but is there a solution out there if that wasn't a constraint that we could get these arrows stabilized and, and really steer a fixed blade really well? Yeah. I mean, we'll jump right into some of the, this answers there of what can help you out and a taller vein definitely helps. Um, and having that area high and back also helps. So,

the shape of the vein and the height of the vein are two big factors. Um, so the, from the first year study that, that Hunter profile, um, that's using the max Hunter had was kind of the best industry, um, profile that we found because there's a lot of area high and high and back on that shape versus what's kind of known as more of a parabolic where it's more of a, uh, a fully rounded backend where there's more area forward. Um,

So this, this geometry, if, if there's a similar surface area, this geometry had, I think it was a 23% increase in this restoring torque or stability. So that was a big factor. Um, and the other thing was height. So what I, what I find is,

A lot of people say they used to shoot a higher profile vein, but they've gone to a shorter one for sound or to reduce drag or whatever reason. But what we found in this study is, so this hybrid hunter is 0.58 inches high.

If we model one that's 10% shorter, so 0.53, or there's a lot of veins that are 0.55. If you go from 0.55, say, to 0.50, that 10% reduction in height, you get about a 2.5% reduction in drag, but you get an 11% reduction in restoring torque.

So it's not a good trade-off. I think a taller vein's better. That's why I generally recommend with broadheads on the front that I think a 0.55 inch, 0.55, 0.58 inch veins are going to perform better. You can even perform better yet by having more of that area kind of high and back. That geometry works really well to restore, get them very quickly restored.

you know, both can be out of tune. Um, and we kind of quantify how far out of tune, but it could be pretty far out of tune, still have broadheads hit with field points with those taller veins and, uh, and, uh, and that right, um, kind of geometry of the vein. Yeah. And then, you know, I used to, I shoot a four and I'll ask you about four versus three or what you found there. But one thing I struggle with is if I start to get too taller on that upper end shooting a four vein, like I start to run into potential contact issues with

my rest, um, you know, some of these other issues that, you know, that, that it's like the point of, you know, limiting return or the point of, I need to go backwards and, you know, there, there's just nothing I'm going to make work unless I was to go to three vein. Um, do you guys in your studies, do you start to look at that? Are you just looking at just pure data on what controls the best? And then, you know, if you can make a rest or a hunting rest work, you can, or are you guys looking at that? Like, how do we, how do we get these to clear, uh,

clear a rest at four veins. Yeah. So you know what? And we've done some modeling of four veins versus three, and I've done some testing of four versus three. And a lot of people are going much shorter, maybe a 0.4 inch tall vein, but four of them. And what I found is that

It doesn't do nearly as good a job stabilizing as three taller vanes. And you have the added drag and sound of a fourth vane. And so I feel like three taller vanes is kind of more efficient in doing everything you want a vane to do, which is, to me, you want a vane to have good stability, so create that lift force that's going to push it back on, but kind of minimize the drag

If you minimize drag, you also minimize wind drift. Because what happens in wind drift, when you get to, say, cross flow, what happens is your arrow might get an initial kind of kick sideways from that cross wind, but then it pretty quickly aligns to that resultant direction of airflow and wind.

Like if you say you're bow shooting 380 feet per second and you have a, I think a 16 mile or cross wind is what I calculated the numbers for your arrow would end up tipping like five degrees into the wind. And most of that wind drift is just due to that inline drag. So if you can reduce inline drag, uh, you can reduce wind drift as well. And that's why I think three higher profile as a little better than, than four, um,

slightly lower profile because you might, you probably get less drag overall and better restoring. Um, but to answer your question, if you had four tall ones, would that stabilize even better? Uh, yeah, it would. Um, but you know, if you're contacting something that kind of blows everything, right. Cause your accuracy is gone. So, um, yeah, I can see the trade off there. You, you for sure want to make sure that's not an issue. So, um,

you know, powdering your rest or somehow, you know, figuring, making sure you're not getting rust contact is very important when you're shooting those taller vanes. - Yep. - Definitely. - O'Reilly Auto Parts are in the business of keeping your car on the road. I love O'Reilly. In fact, the other day, I'm not kidding you, the other day I went into an O'Reilly Auto Parts looking for a part. I needed a different thing that wasn't really in there, you know, only like tangentially related to what they carry.

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Another quick question for you. So one of the reasons I shoot four vein and my, I feel like my arrows are pretty, pretty good. You know, we'll talk about the quality of arrows. You know, everybody's got the one, you know, one, one thousandth of an inch straightness or five one thousands, how much all of that matters. But I shoot a pretty good arrow, but I've always shot four veins because there are times where, you know,

and you probably know more about this than I do as well, but there's always like a strong side of the arrow, right? Or the spine of the arrow is usually stronger no matter how high quality they are. So by having four veins, it gives me the ability to noctune. Yeah.

you know, more consistently versus especially if I go with a cock vein and everything's kind of messed up, you know, or it's set, then it really kind of screws my coloring up unless I just went with all white veins and, you know, took a Sharpie and put a star on whichever one should be up or down or whatever. That was that's my own personal reason, because there are times where it's like, man, this arrow just

flies with the rest of them if i turn the knock 90 degrees you know i set set the knock out you know with the little tick the indicator or the index on the on the knock i just set to the outside of my riser and that's kind of my system but um yeah that's really the only reason i shoot four over three is for knock tuning but now you're you're almost talking me into maybe going back and checking out three white veins and then i can just you know draw on the one that needs to be up

Yeah. I mean, that's what I typically do. And that's what you do. Custom build arrow builds. And we just do three white veins and yeah, it kind of gives you the option for three different positions of your arrow if you would need it. But, but honestly, what I, what I have found and, you know, I, I used to measure spine on every arrow and you know, go to the fletch to the high side and do all that. But as I've learned more and what I've found is if, well, first off you want to be

properly spined. You do not want to be underspined. We put charts on our website for this reason that the numbers on there, so it'll have different, you can pick the chart for how much total weight you want up front with your broadhead and components. We have charts from 125, 150, 175, 200, up to 250 grains up front. Then your arrow length and your bow poundage, it'll give you

recommended arrow spine and those charts we put together, um, at ironwellfitters.com, they're going to tell you there won't be on the light end. They'll be a little more conservative. They'll be like optimal to slightly stiff. And what I've seen with that, with the high speed camera is, uh, in doing that, you get very little flex of the arrow. Anyway, I get like a half inch of vertical flex coming out of the bow. And then like within six feet, it's just going straight. And I think for a hunting arrow, that's what you want. Um,

For target arrow, it doesn't matter so much. You may find that, and a lot of target archers will do this. So maybe add a little more or less point weight and find out where they can hold the tightest groups. And if target archery is most more important to you,

No problem doing that. That makes sense. But what you can find is that you could be underspined. And I've talked to Dr. James Parks about this, who's done a lot of papers and research. He has a PhD in mechanical engineering. A lot of it was on target aeroflight. And then he was the coach for the national team for Australia for archery. What he found is that

Spine doesn't matter that much. You can go quite a bit under spine and still shoot pretty good groups in target archery. I would not recommend that for broadheads for a couple of reasons. One, if your arrow is excessively flexing up and down, now that blade is giving some angle of attack to the oncoming airflow, it's going to push you off. Also at impact...

you know, the best, probably the best measurement of how much penetration you're going to get is that momentum, which is mass times velocity, and it's a vector quantity. So in that straight line. So you want that mass,

And that velocity to be in a straight line to maximize your penetration. And then that's going to be equal to some force times time. So if you couple that with a low force to penetrate, you know, a broadhead is going to have low force to cut through, hide, bone, whatever. That's going to maximize your penetration. So anyway, that's kind of a long explanation of why you want to have kind of optimal spine to a little stiff. But once you do that, I found, and you have an arrow that's got

consistent spine around the shaft. And I would say that, you know, with Easton Axis is the ones we do custom arrow builds with. They do a good job. But, you know, the top manufacturers out there, I think they all do a pretty good job. You know, Victory, Gold Tip, Black Eagle, you know, their premium hunting arrows. I think there's not a lot of variation in spine around the shaft. And what I've seen is if you have a bow just...

relatively well tuned and you're properly spined to a bit stiff, there's not really a need to knock tune. You put that broadhead on and have a very stable arrow. And there shouldn't really be a need to knock tune to get that to fly right. That's been my experience after a lot of

A lot of digging into this, a lot of experimentation. Yeah, and my noctuning may come as a result of me just shooting a bad arrow and me thinking, you know, did that thing fly perfect? No, I'll twist. You know, I think that's probably me torquing the bow or doing something I shouldn't, and that's what probably gets me into noctuning. But yeah, no, that's the reason why I went to four-vein, but yeah, I'll probably fletch them up with three-veins this year and see if it doesn't...

doesn't work for me and give me a little bit uh more more ability to get around the rest um by being able to have those at 120 degrees instead of 90 degrees going over the over the rest so is there anything else out of that study at colorado um you know i know you you talked about um you know mass versus speed you know foc we've talked about all that a little bit is there anything else you want to you want to get into on those or we or or you know findings that came out of the study

Yeah. One thing I would mention is, is a spin up. Cause I think there's some, um, misconceptions out there. So, so the arrow spin up isn't really, doesn't really stabilize the arrow. It's not like a bullet that has to spin at very high velocity because it's an unstable projectile and that spin gives it the stability in an arrow. It's not spinning that fast. Um,

You do want it to spin, though. You don't want to have it straight-fledged. I don't even like one degree. I think it doesn't quite... It just spends too much time going kind of straight before it starts rotating. And the problem there is...

is that if there's anything that's off... So what spin-up does, it doesn't stabilize the arrow, but it does average out any asymmetries. If the point is tipped off to the left because your half-out's bent a little bit and your arrow's pointing 20 thousandths to the left, 20 thousandths of an inch, and you shoot it without rotation, it's just going to go further and further left and impact left of the target. If it's rotating...

that lift force that's created now rotates kind of with it. So it still kind of opens up your groups, but it keeps it on average, you know, still heading down range at the target. So that's the reason for spin.

But spinning really fast, even though there have been some videos recently with guys that are awesome shooters, say the faster it spins up, the more accurate or stable it will be. I don't think that's the case. From all this study, I like the two to three degree offset or helical, I think is a good amount of...

a vein angle to give you that spin up. And a lot of the, we tested, you know, eight or 10 of the top hunting, what I'd consider top hunting veins in the industry. They all gave very similar spin up results of, you know, 70 to 80 revolutions per second. With that, you're rotating, you're

you know it's less than an arrow length that you're getting a full rotation so it can't veer very far off of straight line you know before it's rotating and you know pointing a different direction i think that's good i don't see a need for that very high you know five six degree spin because then you're going to add more drag and more drop more more wind drift um

It is fine if you're not, you know, a lot of these things don't matter if you're going to shoot, shoot under 40, but if you're an out West bow hunter, you're trying to shoot very accurately 60 yards plus, then these, these factors are more important. Yep. I know you mentioned two to three degrees straight versus helical. Do you have a, like on your hunting areas, do you go one way or the other, or does it really ends up being a wash?

Yeah, I don't think... Are you saying offset versus helical? Yeah, yeah, just straight offset versus helical. And I'll let you say your preference and I'll kind of explain why I end up where I'm at. Yeah, to me, man, there isn't really much of a difference. If I think about what a helix is in geometry is if you take a straight line...

down the top of the cylinder, say you tip it at three degrees, you wrap it around the cylinder, that's a helix. And really that's kind of what you're trying to do with any of these clamps. To me, it's more of a clamp. You got a straight clamp or a helical clamp, but the straight clamp to me is for small angles. It works well for...

you know, one degree, maybe two degree. If you get more than that, it starts not following the roll off of the radius. And that's when you need a helical clamp. But, and that's why I say, um, I kind of consider them both the same. It's more that clamp system you use and is it fixed or does it wrap the, uh, the arrow shaft? So my preference would be a helical, like two and a half, two to three degree. Um,

Because I think it wraps the shaft and it keeps it attached a little, attaches it a little better. Yeah. And that's, that's exactly what I was going to say. The only reason I went from, you know, straight offset was because we used to shoot the older six millimeter, you know, the old, the old gold tips when they had, you know, larger diameters and you can actually get a two to three, you know,

degree offset to actually touch and your, you know, your, the back of your vein wasn't floating and the front wasn't floating. We're now, you know, shooting some of these micro diameter, you know, I shoot black Eagle, um, you know, rampages and it's like, you can't get more than two degrees on the, you know, on your vein without, especially in the straight without it touching. So we've just went to, to helical and it, uh, you know, it seems to, seems to work really well. And that's really the only reason I always preferred straight, but, uh,

Helical seems to give me like better contact on the front of the vein in the back and it seems to kind of get stayed glued down a little bit better. Yep. Yep. I agree. And then the last thing I want to mention this study that we spent a lot of a lot of time on this year was sound.

Um, that's another reason people have gone away, maybe gone away from a higher profile vein, especially like a shorter, higher profile vein is they feel like they're louder. And so they've gone to shorter, longer ones, which are less stable. So less accurate. Um, but what we've, uh,

What I found with sound, first off, I'm going to say that I don't think it's that important. I don't think it's as important as people make it out to be. And the reason for that is, you know, we were shooting over microphones and we had two omnidirectional microphones, you know, down range that we would shoot over. And then we would record the sound trace from the shot and then the arrow traveling to the target and then as it passed over the target. And we did a lot of analysis when the arrow is 10 yards away from the target.

or the animal say, and when it's 10 yards away, they're all pretty quiet. It's hard to get a statistically significant difference between, you know, one vein and another. Um, I mean, we also found that our solid blade broadheads are very quiet and we can't really distinguish them from field points. And that's even as it passes, even as it passes over the microphone, um,

So that's kind of a side note, but some broadheads are louder than others. And I think it's because there's not a lot of fluid dynamic modeling to try and minimize the turbulence and minimize that coming off the back. But also we did a lot of studying of the veins. So for one thing I should say is that when the arrow's 10 yards, say from the animal, it's hard to distinguish one vein from another, but that flare up of sound is more when it's in that last five yards, three yards. So

Again, I don't think it's that important because I think if it didn't hear something it wants to react to when it's 10 yards away, it probably doesn't have enough time to get out of the way. That being said, I don't think I'll ever convince people that sound doesn't matter. So I spent a lot of time on it this year. We really looked at the fluid flow over all these different vein designs, what was causing the higher sound than others. And a lot of it was just the geometry and the way that the

the flow wasn't staying attached to the veins, this airflow. It was separating, causing these turbulence. And we saw that show up

and sound. And, you know, sometimes it's, if you're very, very flexible vein, some of those would flutter and that would really amplify the sound. But a lot of it was, uh, was geometry. Yeah. Yeah. Because, and I don't, I think my numbers are a little rusty, but what the speed of sound. So my thoughts on sound, which is probably incorrect, you know, speed of sound is a little bit over what, 1100 feet per second.

let's say we're shooting a 300 foot per second, you know, arrow. So your arrow only makes it a quarter of the way, you know, it's a little more than a quarter, I guess, but I think it comes down to the animal, correct? Like if, if the sound of your bow goes off will be, in my opinion, the sound that really alerts the animal, correct? Like the, or, or do you think that the arrow flight would be the sound that the animal picks up on and they don't hear your bow go off?

Yeah, I think, well, you can argue with how far away the animal is, but I'd say most archery shots, yeah, they're going to hear the bow go off. And you're right, the arrow's 10 yards down. Let's say it's just a 40-yard shot. Your arrow's 10 yards down range before he hears the bow because of the time it takes for the sound of the bow to get there. What we also saw is that

That bow sound is not instantaneous, but it rings. That bow noise is ringing. So the arrows travel 10 yards and there's still bow noise ringing and coming off and a lot. So any short shots, say 40 yards and under, I feel like it's totally the bow noise. Either they're reacting to that or not because it's so much louder than the arrow noise and it rings for the arrows coming

move 10 yards and all that ringing is coming off of it. And, you know, and that, that noise is just getting to the animal when that arrow is 10 yards down, right? So, you know, people say, well, I looked at the video and the arrow was halfway there when the deer moved. Well, yeah, that's really when he heard the bow go off and had time to react to it. Um, so I do think the bow noise is a, is a bigger factor and trying to quiet your bow is a good idea. Um,

I think those, you know, the long range shots are where people might argue that, oh, the bow noise is pretty quiet. And then he had quite a bit, you know, maybe he had a half a second to a second before the arrow got there. And, and then I might argue that arrow noise matters more than, you know, and I would, I would kind of argue that,

I'm not so sure that it's arrow noise versus just what the animal sees. Because an animal, you know, they hear the bone noise, they look that way, and then their motion vision is extremely good. You know, there's different studies on this that will say like, you know, deer and elk vision is all set up for movement. So if they look that way and then you're moving, which you probably are, you know, after the shot, they might see the arrow in flight. I think a lot of that later movement is,

It's due to a visual cue. But, you know, all this stuff's really hard to prove. So, you know, we spent a lot of time figuring out how we could quiet down a vein. And we're actually going to come out with a new vein probably sometime in August that has that same effect.

You know, it has kind of equal or better accuracy stability to that hybrid hunter profile, but it's got different geometry on the front and back to keep that airflow attached to the vein to make it much quieter. It's, um,

I think max stealth was our quietest industry vein out there that we tested in the first year. And it's equal or quieter than the max stealth, even though it's got much better stability. So for those that really want that quieter vein, but yet still have good stability, I think that'll be a good option for people. Yeah. And I've just always been the camp or the thought person.

that keep my stuff as quiet as I can. And it's going to help it. It's not going to make anything worse because my stuff's quieter, but yeah, I can't tell you how much it really matters. It's just, I'm going to make every effort to keep things as quiet as I can. Um, you know, or as possible. You know, some people are going with a shorter vein to be quieter, but then they're doing all these other things that make it louder. You know, some guys are like shooting feathers and then worrying about sound. Well, feathers are so much louder than veins and broadheads. Um,

That's kind of crazy. Or they'll go very high speed. Of course, it's getting there faster, but your bow is much louder and the arrow is louder. Or they won't worry about their tune so much. They'll say, well, yeah, if I go to mechanical, I can shoot, but I can't shoot fixed. Well, that'll point out they have some issue with, say, spine or their bow is out of tune.

Both of those make the arrow much louder. If your arrow is fishtailing its way down there or you're having a bunch of flexing, those increase drag, wind drift, and sound. So, yeah, there's a lot of other factors there that I don't think people necessarily consider that they're choosing the wrong direction on. So,

Just want to point that out too. Yeah. One thing, you know, I picked it up. I noticed it before, but like when we used to go to the ATA, I used to work with Martin archery a little bit when they were still back in Washington, you know, the old ATA trick. So everybody thinks you've got the quietest new bow as you have them shoot a 900 grain arrow.

out of the bow all the test bows you know they don't really know how heavy that arrow is but it quieted everything down and there was nothing there weren't enough limb savers enough limb attachments enough whatever to to compensate for just a couple hundred grains and arrow weight you know so there's things you can do um you know i don't shoot an ultra fast setup i shoot 280 with typically a fairly heavy arrow that you know does more for noise

you know, then, then all of these other, I don't want to call them gizmos or gimmicks, but you know, any attachments you can add to that system, um, the heavier arrow seems to do it. Yeah, definitely. I think kind of a,

that very light very fast arrow there's a lot of negatives there um i mean then the positive and it's great if you're shooting like 3d unmarked 3d archery and you got an eyeball range yet i mean that's really the reason for having a super fast light arrow is if your range is off you know you can still hit the target um being off a few yards say but in a hunting setup

It's not great for a number of reasons. For one, a lighter, faster arrow, you know, you lose a lot more of that velocity due to drag. You know, velocity, drag is velocity proportional to velocity squared. So a light, fast arrow is going to lose more velocity. You're going to have less momentum at impact. Yeah, and your bow's louder and it's more difficult to tune and things like that as well. Yep, yep.

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All right, let's move into, you know, I wish I was more of a bow tuner. I'm real kind of, you know, I pay attention, but I'm kind of hands off. What's your process for going into season? Because I'm going to give you a real quick synopsis of me bow hunting 15 years ago. You'd go in, get your bow set up. You'd get it all paper tuned with your, you know, field points.

go out and shoot. And then about two weeks before season, I'd start shooting broadheads and my confidence would go out the window. All that confidence I had built up all summer was gone. And so then it was like, start over, walk back, take it into the shop, try again, take it into the shop. I would, I'd move my rest over, screw something up worse than I could figure out. And it was, that was my process. And then finally before season, you'd get it

it get it back now you know my system is i don't paper tune hardly all anymore we kind of just go a center shot knock height get it close and then my new system is just shooting field points and broadheads separately until i get them to walk together and then i just leave my bow alone um you know strings will stretch cables will stretch over time but what's your opinion like what's the how do you get your stuff ready and is there a right way a wrong way or just a way um that you go about it

Yeah. And my, my methods have kind of evolved over, over the years, but you know, currently what I'm doing and I I'll say that I I'll shoot broadheads. Broadheads will be part of my tuning from, you know, day one pretty much, or maybe not day one, but you know, within the first week or so I'm shooting some broadheads to see how they fly. Cause like you said, if your, your target archery setup might be dialed,

and then you throw broadheads on later and they're not flying well. Well, to me, it's, I'm, I'm a bow hunter. I mean, I do target shooting. I do tack events, 3ds for fun, but it's really comes down to, I want to hit that elk or caribou or, you know, this year I drew a goat tag or I drew a sheep tag this year. So I want to hit that sheep, you know, for sure at range. So really good broadhead flight is very important to me. So I incorporate it fairly early, but, um,

Anyways, my tuning setup is, or my method, I'd say I'll set up center shot. I'll set up the arrow to go through the center of the burger button roughly. I'll put a knock points perpendicular to that. I'll shoot through paper. And what I do is I'll have a bear shaft and a flat shaft just with field points initially. And that bear shaft, if I already got all the

If I've got other arrows built, I'll cut the veins off one. Otherwise I'll just build one up and I'll add some weight to it. Um, I use like metal duct tape, so I don't have to put too much on, but you can also just put a couple of wraps on, try to get that arrow weight, total arrow weight to be about the same. And that a mass difference in back will, will affect your dynamic spine a little bit. So I like to kind of add weight at the back to make them equal. And then I'll, uh, you know, initially I'll shoot through paper, um,

With the flat shaft and a bare shaft and, uh, you know, make some adjustments to basically getting, getting a bullet hole through paper. And the reason I'll use a bare shaft, it's just easier to see when the veins aren't on it. If you're getting a perfect bullet hole, um, or not, or if you're a little tail, right up, down or left, just a little easier for me to see with a bare shaft. That's some of the reason for doing it there. And I'm doing it like 10 to 12 feet.

So I'll do that and then I'll get some shots through the bow. I might shoot it for a week before I come back and visit it again. And then typically I'll check again through paper if that looks good. My next level of tune is shooting that flat shaft and bare shaft with field points on.

And you can start at 20, you know, to make sure you hit the target. But I'll really look at 30 yards and then 40 yards for kind of a finer increment. But what'll happen is, let's say your arrow's coming out of your bow tail left,

Well, that airflow across that left side is with no veins to stabilize it back. It's just going to stay tail left and your arrow is going to hit off to the right. And if you're just shooting like a flat foam target, you can kind of see that it just stays tail left at impact. So your flat shaft will be...

say in the bullseye and you're right in your, um, bear shaft, you know, at 30 yards, say it's six inches, right. With the, with the noctail left. Well, then, you know, your bows, your arrows coming out of your bow tail left. Um, and then you can adjust, do an adjustment that would be adjusting your rest a little bit, right. And these are small adjustments at this point, like

you know, um, if you've got a micro adjust where you're just doing these 5,000 clicks, you know, just do a few clicks, um, and check it again. But these aren't, these aren't the big, you know, big divisions on your, on your rest. These are more like, you know, a 15,000, 30,000, do little, little adjustments. I would also say whenever you do an adjustment, shoot three, you know, even right off the bat, shoot three times and see if it's consistent. Cause if you're

Um, if you're six inches, right. The first time and like a foot left the next time, well, now there's some other problem there. Um, it could be a, uh, some major issue with your bow or it could be your form just isn't consistent. And if your form isn't consistent, you know, spend some more time figuring out what's going on there. Are you, are you creating a bunch of face pressure? Are you torquing your bow? Are you,

anticipating your shot, you know, have somebody observe you shooting and see if they can help you with your bow setup. But that's kind of my, and then I'll go out to 40 yards. And this is really how we quantified how far a bow was out of tune for testing these different vein heights and see how well they stabilize a broadhead. What I found is that 40 yards, if your, if your bear shaft hits within four inches of flat shaft,

you're good to go. And at 30 yards, that would be say like two to three inches. If your bear shaft is hitting two to three inches from your flat shaft, that's good enough. You don't need to be perfect. If you're at 40 yards with an eight to 12 inches right, I consider that pretty far out of tune.

But what we saw is with the, um, you know, the best veins, like the hybrid hunter vein, your broadheads and field points are still going to hit within an inch or so. It just stabilizes it so quickly in a well, but that's how I quantify how out of tune it is. And that's what I'll say. If we ever have a customer, you know, struggling to get broadheads to shoot well for them, typically I'll just, we'll figure out if you spine properly or not. Um,

And if his bow is, you know, what veins he has on the back, is the arrow fairly stable? And then is his bow just relatively well-tuned? And we'll have him do that bear shaft, flat shaft at 30 to quantify that. But that's kind of my process anyway. And one last thing I'll add is that I don't do it once and then never look at it again. And that's a good reason to just keep that bear shaft because you can then—

you know, shoot that, you know, you know, every couple of weeks or once a month, maybe at that 30 yard target and see if it's still consistent. That, that to me gives me a lot of confidence before I had it on. See, I just got done with a hunt. I'm going on another one, shoot bare shaft, flat shaft at 30 and 40. If they're still hitting together, I know nothing really changed much on the bow and I'm still, I'm still dial. I'm still tuned in. Yeah. That's a great, great point there. Um,

Okay, so we got through tuning, arrow, veins, everything that matters. Now, I'm going to move to broadheads. And one of the things that I maybe stress out a lot is I got new six iron wheels. I put five on and I put them in my quiver and I kind of go through them like, I like this arrow the best. I like that one second. I number them all, go through, shoot them, and this one just gives me the most confidence. And then I'll shoot that one or the number two arrow quite a bit. In your opinion...

you know, what the steel you're using and the temper and everything we've got on them and the hardening, like how often should you have to sharpen after target? Do you have to sharpen? Um, and if so, kind of how you recommend, I'm going to, I'm going to talk, I blame myself last year and I messaged you a little bit after that on this and hopefully you don't mind talking about it, but I'm blaming myself on, on a blood trail I had last year. But first I'm gonna let you kind of go over sharpening, um, you know, and going through the target.

This will vary a lot by broadhead and steel use and how sharp they start. But sharpness matters a lot. In all the broadhead development work, I'd say that I was really going after durability initially. I wanted to get through that elk shoulder blade and not damage a blade. But what I realized pretty quickly is

Um, having a very good sharpness and retaining that sharpness is really what gets you that max penetration through an animal, keeping that force low to penetrate. So I think it's very important to shoot sharp broadheads. So first off, I'd say whatever broadheads you use, make sure they're, they're sharp because there's a lot of them, especially, um, you know, one piece solid three blades that just aren't very sharp. Um, in some of them, some of them, they let you know that, but there's a lot of them that are just have a milled finish. So, um,

They're just machining with a, you know, a mill, a cutter and putting that edge on with no grinding at all. And so they're not, they're not what I consider a sharp edge. Um, if you have those and want to use them, you know, spend the time to learn how to sharpen them. Cause I think, I think a broadhead blade, you know, it should be able to shave hair. Um, or if you don't want to, you know, accidentally, if you don't want to risk cutting your arm, you know, take a piece of paper, uh,

and just hold it up and just see if you can easily cut into that edge of paper or is it tearing? That's another good test for sharpness. What I would say with, you know, we use an A2 tool steel and we use this, you know, cryogenic treatment, triple temper, so we can get the hardness way up there. It's 60 rock we'll see hardness. So with that, we can get it very sharp and it retains the edge well. So what I found is, and what I say is if you shot five times or less into foam, you

What I found is I can't measure a difference in sharpness. I would still check it. I would still try and cut that piece of paper or, you know, shave a little hair on your arm, make sure it's still shaving hair. If it is, you know, put it in your quiver and go ahead and use it. I can tell you that most broadhead blades are, you know, 420, 90 or 95% of them use a 420 stainless steel.

Um, and it just doesn't retain the edge. So one shot in a target, you're typically not sharp anymore. And that's just, that should just be a practice head. Um, but that's, yeah, that's what I would say about that. But for sure, check your broad heads. And, you know, if you want to take one head, I do think it's important. What I like to do is take one head and maybe it'll be my practice head and put it on every arrow that's going to my quiver and shoot it at, you know, moderately long range and make sure it hits well. Um,

Just to make sure there's not some issue with that arrow with spine or straightness, you know, near, you know, I think you mentioned straightness. The 1,000 versus 3,000 straightness, it doesn't matter very much, I don't think, unless it's all at, say, the knock end. If you've got like one little bend at the end, that can make that arrow, you know, flex differently, shoot differently. Yeah.

So I like to shoot every arrow that's going in my quiver with a broadhead, but it might just be my practice head. And then I just screw on a new one to make sure it's sharp. So that's a good way to go too. Yeah, I always get nervous and I probably overthink everything, but it's like, man, if I unscrew this, screw one on and then put my other one back on, like if I don't get everything just right, like am I going to create an issue in there somewhere? And I know it's probably overthinking, but that's one of my issues where I should just dedicate, whether I put black Sharpie on them or something, just designate them as practice heads.

um, that's something I might be doing, but I, I messaged you last and hopefully you don't mind talking about this. It's just real world results. And I do blame myself on this one a little bit. Um, I had shot my number one head probably, or my number one arrow, probably more than I should have, you know, 40, 50 times through the target. And I always was kind of doing the thumb flick, you know, off of it. Can you hear kind of the snap? Like, you know, anybody that's been around blades, uh,

long enough. Usually if you get that like sharp, crisp, you know, noise off of it, you're like, it's still pretty sharp. You know, it hasn't rolled an edge. And so I elected to hunt with it. And I hit a bull at 40 yards, good in the pocket and every iron will that I've hit animal on like blood everywhere instantly, like had great blood. And on that one, I picked up blood, but not until a hundred yards away. And then it didn't bleed a lot, but it did sprint to its death. Like I'll give the broadhead credit that the elk died really well, but

But there was, you know, I reached out to you just we found the bull. Everything was good, but it was definitely a different blood trail than I had before. And then I started to like blame myself like you dummy. You shouldn't. You know, usually it was five or ten shots. And this time you went 30, 40, 50 shots without touching it up. You know, and like I say, I probably overanalyze how sharp it needs to be. But that was the one time I'm like, all right, we need to start paying more attention to how sharp your broadhead is just because I

That flesh wound, that surface is what's going to give you that first blood. And I had a great pastor like right in the pocket and just, I didn't get a lot of blood and I'm like, well, everything, all my experience shows I should have got great blood there and didn't. Was it a dull broadhead? And is that my fault?

Yeah, I think that has a lot to do with it. What I've seen, you know, there's a sharp broadhead gives you two things that are important. It gives you that low force to penetrate, so it increases penetration, but it also slices all the tissue going all the way through. And, you know, Cody Greenwood, Trad Lab, was doing some experimenting and where he was shooting through animals with different broadheads and then measuring like the

the total lacerations. And, and he said that every iron will broadhead he shot, you get a full width cut with it. Whereas a lot of other broadheads, they're pushing a lot of tissue aside. Um, say a three blade that's not very sharp, might have only have like an arrow size hole through liver or lungs. It tears a hole through, but it pushes a lot of tissue aside and doesn't slice it. And I think, you know, a lot of the bleeding, you know, animals for the most part are dying by, by bleeding. Um,

I mean, their lungs can collapse too, but a lot of that, a lot of that's blood flow. So you want to slice everything, every little artery there. A lot of times that's the difference between getting an animal and not is slicing that artery, especially like, you know, through the liver. Say you can have, you can shoot a liver in two different spots and whether you cut an artery can mean it's dead in seconds or it's not.

not dead for hours. So cutting every artery all the way through, you're going to get more bleeding, better blood trails. So I'd say that's probably a pretty big factor. I mean, you can sometimes hitting up into the shoulder, up into the muscle, if their leg was forward when you shot and then it came back, sometimes there's muscle or layers of muscle that might

cover up a hole and make a blood trail not as good. I could say like a high lung shot that can happen too. The lungs are going to collapse and then bleed, but if the holes are up high, blood coming out of there has got to go around the sides. That can be potentially...

I'm not as good a blood trail, but you know, having that sharp broadhead gives you the best chance of slicing everything and giving you the best amount of bleeding possible. Yeah. And, and tighten that pocket. You know, I was trying to make excuses or try to figure it out. And I'm like, well, maybe it was so tight to the pocket that it was bleeding the pocket and then it would run down the leg, you know, and that's why we weren't getting anything to the ground, you know, outside of where it was. So, uh,

So yeah, it's just one of those things where from here on out, everything's going to be razor sharp. I'll just get my flat stone out, make sure that everything is touched up and sharp, and we won't let that. At least we won't let the sharpness be the reason from here on out. Yeah, we do have wide series broadheads too. I don't generally recommend them as the number one head for broadheads,

you know, long range, um, out West big game when you might have a 60, 80 yard shot, you know, whatever, whatever's your effective shooting range. I kind of like our, our S series or, or single for those. They're relatively a little bit more compact, but our wide heads, um, a lot of guys are using those for elk too. They make, they make big holes. And now we just came out with, uh,

wide single bevels as well, and 100, 125 grain, you know, 150 grain on up. And, you know, that is a wider cut. It's two and an eighth inch total cut, inch and three-eighths main blade, three-quarter bleeder. And our bleeders have the single bevel grind on them too. So what happens with that is there's this rotation through the animal that really opens up those holes quite a bit, creates a lot of trauma. So yeah, we just launched those a week or so ago. And for guys that want to have

you know, bigger holes, quick kills, more blood on the ground. You know, that's a great option too. Um, I often carry a mixed quiver, a few of our S series or single bevel standard, single bevels, and then a few of our, our wide or wide single bevels. And depending on what the shot is, if I'm, if I'm elk hunting over water for the afternoon, evening up, I'll throw a widen because I've shot elk with them. They penetrate great. Um, they're just less forgiving on those longer range shots, but

Again, with a very stable arrow, you know, our friend Dan Statton, Elkshape, he likes the wides, even the wide solid blade. But he's got a very stable arrow set up and he shoots them well to 80 yards. So that's an option, too, for getting that bigger hole and more blood on the ground. Yeah, you just brought up a point I'm curious on, you know, with, you know, just the engineering and me thinking out loud, and you might be able to say why it isn't. Does a single bevel with that rotation through...

through bone, through soft tissue. Have you found that the single bevel doesn't penetrate as well as a double bevel or is it negligible? Yeah, it seems to be negligible. I mean, that was my thinking as well. As an engineer, I'm thinking slicing straight through has got to be less energy required than that pressure on those two bevels creating that torque and rotating through. But

What is also happening is the arrow's rotating that direction already at impact. So there's some rotation momentum there as well. And the single bevel isn't trying to make it rotate faster than that. So what I've seen in practical testing is

Man, I've had a hard, you know, I actually made single bevels to try and prove that they weren't as good as double bevels, but I really struggled. I mean, they, they penetrate really well. And in the high speed video we've done, it just seems like that rotational, you know, that rotation just keeps going through the animal, but it doesn't seem to really slow the arrow down any more than the double bevel. Gotcha. Yeah. Perfect. That's, that's good to know. Um,

You mentioned you got some new broadheads coming out. Anything else coming out or anything else that the listeners should know about choosing a broadhead this year or arrow setup or vein setup to help them out this year? The season's only a couple months away. Something new from probably the last podcast we had is that from that arrow study the first year, I decided in just seeing how much more accurate an arrow can be that's very stable. We started doing custom arrow builds. I worked with Easton to get

their axis and match grade axis arrows. And we fletch them at about three degree helical with that hybrid hunter vein. We started selling that vein as well. And for people that want

You know, don't want to build their own arrows. Just want to have them built and know that they're done well. What I have is a, basically a machinist in a machining center, very accurately cutting and then facing both ends. Um, I feel like that knock-in is really important. It doesn't get enough attention and that little squaring tool people often use and just do a couple of rotations. It doesn't do much to make that very square. So, um,

Um, anyway, we, we do custom arrow builds now, you know, just for your length and work with you to make sure that the spine is proper for you. So that's kind of new. We're going to, you know, continue to, to build on that. Um, yeah, we do some ultralight hunting knives. We just added a, our, we called our K3 boning knife, ultralight boning knife. It, uh, it's like about a five inch, uh,

It looks like a fillet knife, a little bit stiffer, but it's a great boning knife for people that like a little bit longer blade to take the, say, the hindquarters off an elk, things like that. So yeah, that's what's new currently. I've always got some prototype broadheads in the works. Talk to you a bit about that one offline, maybe some more things to test. But yeah, we'll have a new vein here in August from this study that I think

will, yeah, people will like it. It's going to have low drag, low wind drift, low sound, but yet great stability. So it should be a great one. Perfect. Perfect. Well, how can everybody out there that doesn't already know about Iron Will find you? Yeah. Our website is ironwilloutfitters.com. We're on Instagram at Iron Will Outfitters, Facebook and yeah, YouTube as well at Iron Will Outfitters. And we'll put

I should mention those. We're putting out some kind of white papers from that study, from the university study on our website. So if you go to our website, I think it's under, it's the far right, you know, dropdown menu. I think it's bowhunterblog where we're going to post papers from that study. So if you really want to geek out on,

There's one showing the arrow, arrow, um, there's one on arrow height or vein height instability, and then, um, you know, vein shape. And, uh, we'll just keep posting them on there as we, um, as we bring them up for, you know, I love, uh, applying good mechanical engineering, um, and science to becoming better bow hunters. So it's, it's, uh, it's something that I want to continue doing and, you know, try to make people as reliable as science allows.

Perfect. Perfect. Well, we appreciate all your, all your hard work and research there, Bill, and helping us as, as bow hunters, um, you kind of figure all this out. So appreciate having you on the, on the show and good luck this fall. Yeah. Thanks Jason. You too.

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