Cat Whiskers and Speed...

[Ryan K Sanpei]

A few years back, I was curious to find out how much cat whiskers adversely affected my arrow speeds. I played around with the size of them and placement on my bowstrings. I tried to get a fine balance between minimal affect on speed and acceptable noise reduction. After a bunch of testing, I found out what was working in regards to my set up. The only thing... I forget to document it.

Yesterday I had the Chono out, so I decided to run some tests with my wife's bow. For each cat whisker ball, I'm currently using two 1 1/4" strips (the round ones). They each weigh 17grs per ball. I use a total of four on each string.

First I chrono'd my standard set up. For strings under 52", I have them set 8" and 14" away from the end loops on both sides.
With this set up, I got an average of 158fps.

To replicate a single, larger cat whisker, I situated both cat whisker balls at 14". This got an average of 157fps.

Next I left one at 14" and slides the other to 20". The average here was 154fps.

 

[Ryan K Sanpei]

Then I slid the other one to 20" and both were at 20". This got an average of 152fps.

After those series of test were done, I decided to cut off one ball from each side. So now, there was only one at 14" on each side. 159fps was the average here.

Finally, I cut off the reminder two and shot it through the chrono. An average of 160fps was reported.

 

[Ryan K Sanpei]

Please keep in mind, although I tried to be as consistent as possible, I didn't use a shooting machine. It was shot with fingers and Staci double checked my draw length mark on every shot.

As expected, the closer you move the silencers towards the arrow, the slower the speeds get. Given that you add the weight in the same areas, the more weight you add, the slower the speeds get.

Given my "unscientific" results, I've found that I can find a nice balance between speed and noise reduction for my bows.

 

[justinspicher]

I did a similar test with my bow. I cut the wool silencers down quite a bit to reduce drag and still work on the noise. I am shooting 200fps and it's about as quiet as it's gonna get.

 

[Ryan K Sanpei]

I did a similar test with my bow. I cut the wool silencers down quite a bit to reduce drag and still work on the noise. I am shooting 200fps and it's about as quiet as it's gonna get.

Sweet! Would you mind sharing your current set up? Distance from the end loop? Amount of wool strands, length? Type of wool? How many silencers?

I hear so many good things about wool, it's the next silencing material that I'd like to experiment with!

 

[justinspicher]

I'll get this info to you tonight when I get home from work.

 

[Ryan K Sanpei]

I'll get this info to you tonight when I get home from work.

That'll be awesome! Thank you!

 

[justinspicher]

So here is what I've got on my string-two total wool silencers, one up top, one on the bottom. Both are 11" from the loop to their location. Each is approximately 2" big. I took some wool yarn from my wifes craft room, and wrapped it around my hand 20 times. Then I split my string and put it in between the two strands. Once I re-strung the bow, I VERY carefully cut the "loops" I made and after a few shots they puffed up. I just trimmed them down to a more manageable size and went from there.

 

[Ryan K Sanpei]

So here is what I've got on my string-two total wool silencers, one up top, one on the bottom. Both are 11" from the loop to their location. Each is approximately 2" big. I took some wool yarn from my wifes craft room, and wrapped it around my hand 20 times. Then I split my string and put it in between the two strands. Once I re-strung the bow, I VERY carefully cut the "loops" I made and after a few shots they puffed up. I just trimmed them down to a more manageable size and went from there.

Sweet! Thanks for the info. I need to start experimenting with wool... I've heard so many good things about the results!

Aloha!
Ryan

 

[justinspicher]

I am glad I could help. I know that they are the only type of string silencer that won't wear out after 100 shots. Everything else I've tried does well on the quiet department, but not on the durability department. Especially the rubber ones.