Iron Will Vane - Personal Feedback

[TX_Diver]

Shot some 3 fletch IW vanes and 4 fletch max stealths with field points and broadheads at 60 yards last night and marked every shot. Then I overlaid the groups onto a clean target to separate out the IW and max stealth vanes. Shot 6 arrows 5x each (minus one or 2 apparently) and shot largely round robin with arrow numbers.

The basis for this is that I was consistently hitting left with BH and wanted to figure out if it was an arrow issue, fletching issue (I had generally considered the 2 fletchings to hit together when shot as part of a 3-4 shot group), or something different. What it appears is that overall the FP do hit pretty close and that at closer ranges I couldn't really separate the 2 effectively in any smaller group size. Plotted out the 4 fletch hit a bit lower at 60 (the difference is less at 50) and the 3 fletch hit a hair high and left.

FP Group

BH Group

4 Fletch overlaid

3 Fletch overlaid

Group sizes

At a glance there's really not much difference. It appears that each 3 fletch arrow grouped better with itself with the BH (there's almost 3 distinct groups for arrows 3, 4, & 5) and it appears that the 4 fletch group a hair better as a whole. The differences are small and while this is a decent number of shots it still probably borders on statistically insignificant so I'm hesitant to take too much away from it other than deciding which way I want to adjust my sight and rolling on.

I could call a few fliers in the groups but didn't cull any shots from the groups. For the latter half of this I was running to the target and then walking back to my bow (I did 4.5 miles walking/running over the evening through this sampling...) and I finished up a few minutes after sunset.

The one item that I did find interesting is with both fletchings the BH groups appear to be narrower horizontally but taller vertically. I'm guessing I make slightly more effort to center my housing in the peep with BH but am really not sure otherwise. Again with a sight adjustment I think either of these is a reasonable group for elk hunting where I really don't want to take a 60 yard shot anyways.

 

[Bill V]

Iron will is becoming ridiculous with his testing. No way that his vane is quieter than a max stealth or a tac vane. I’m sure the vane stabilizes a fixed head great. But for him to say that his vanes are the quietest is plain false.

It’s all marketing… he does a test with the University of Colorado. Sounds good and all but all that means is that the college basically paid for his vane testing. You don’t have to have that to figure out how quiet or how well a cane stabilizes.

He also recently said on a podcast that his arrows are 10x more square than if you cut them and square them yourself… square is square. So another false statement for marketing.

And last… he is now saying that mechanicalals fail 40% of the time! I’m not arguing that they don’t fail but that’s a big statement to make.

He makes a GREAT head it Just seems like he is really reaching and just spouting out some false info all in the name of making more money.

I appreciate any feedback, even when it's critical. It gives me a chance to explain and sometimes rethink.

I never said the IW Hybrid Hunter vane was the quietest. It was about average in the CU testing. The max stealth is a little quieter. I did say that we found the hybrid material to be quieter than the max material in this profile and that overall the IW Hybrid Hunter vane had the best performance factoring in Accuracy, stability, drag, wind drift, spin up, and sound. That's why we put it on our arrows. If another one performed better, I would buy those instead. Basically they added up the scores in each of these areas to rank the vanes. Personally I value accuracy, stability, drag, and wind drift higher than sound unless the vane is very loud. I did pay CU to do the project and plan to fund another one this year.

All squaring is not equal when you can measure it to .0001 resolution. Not even close. When hunting season is over, I'll provide some data here.

Also, I did not say mechanicals fail 40% of the time. On the Kifarucast with Aron, I said that if you have 8 potential failure modes that each have a 5% chance of occurring, you would have a 40% chance of failure. That's how probability works. Unfortunately, we don't know the actual percent chance for each failure mode. My point was that a bunch of small percentage failure modes can add up to a significant chance of failure.

As an engineer, I do my best to share accurate technical data, but feel free to question when you think something is inaccurate.

 

[Deerscat]

I appreciate any feedback, even when it's critical. It gives me a chance to explain and sometimes rethink.

I never said the IW Hybrid Hunter vane was the quietest. It was about average in the CU testing. The max stealth is a little quieter. I did say that we found the hybrid material to be quieter than the max material in this profile and that overall the IW Hybrid Hunter vane had the best performance factoring in Accuracy, stability, drag, wind drift, spin up, and sound. That's why we put it on our arrows. If another one performed better, I would buy those instead. Basically they added up the scores in each of these areas to rank the vanes. Personally I value accuracy, stability, drag, and wind drift higher than sound unless the vane is very loud. I did pay CU to do the project and plan to fund another one this year.

All squaring is not equal when you can measure it to .0001 resolution. Not even close. When hunting season is over, I'll provide some data here.

Also, I did not say mechanicals fail 40% of the time. On the Kifarucast with Aron, I said that if you have 8 potential failure modes that each have a 5% chance of occurring, you would have a 40% chance of failure. That's how probability works. Unfortunately, we don't know the actual percent chance for each failure mode. My point was that a bunch of small percentage failure modes can add up to a significant chance of failure.

As an engineer, I do my best to share accurate technical data, but feel free to question when you think something is inaccurate.

To be clear and fair I have not tried your vanes. I’m sure they are a great vane. And it looks as if I totally mis spoke about the Colorado testing. Sorry about that.

It did come across that you said in the podcast that mechanical broadheads failed 40%. I do understand now what you are saying when “put into potential failure modes” where the 40 percent comes from.

You have made it clear that you sought out the best vane and a quiet vane. It would be nice to see the data. Because hunting companies are always coming up with the new latest and greatest.

You do make the best broadheads and components! Thanks for the reply Bill!