How to Store Archery Bows The Right Way?

Categorized as Archery Tips
bow case

Knowing how to store your bow correctly is vital to ensure the longevity of the bow.

Not only damaged bow can thwart your shooting performance, but it also can drain your pocket quickly since replacing the bow costs a lot of money.

For the reasons mentioned above, it’s better to go an extra mile to make sure all of your archery equipment is stored and maintained well.

How to Store a Bow

Direct sunlight and extreme temperatures; both hot and cold, are arch enemies of any well-crafted bows; therefore, the first tip is to keep your bow away from being exposed to any of these villains.

The second tip is to avoid stringing your bow but to store it horizontally, either on a stand or lying on a flat surface.

You may want to consider getting a bow case to help to store your bow.

Bow cases will come in handy on many occasions, for example when you have to travel by car to attend archery events, and you need to leave your bow in the car.

Bow cases such as Allen Compound Bow Case can help protect your bow from warping or glue failures caused by constant exposure to direct sunlight on those hot sunny days.

10 Bow Maintenance Tips

The bows that are made from fiberglass or carbon require little to no maintenance.

The bows that are made from natural materials such as wood, horn, and sinew may require regular maintenance, to be safe read the instruction manual carefully and consult with the bowyers if you are unsure.

The following are some tips that you can take to make sure your bow is well-maintained:

  1. No matter what, you must never dry fire your bow.
  2. You should use a stringer to string your bow, never string your bow without a stringer.
  3. You should never string your bow backward.
  4. You should unstring your bow when you’re not using it.
  5. Replace your string quickly, if it looks old and worn.
  6. You shouldn’t rest your bow on its tip to avoid wearing the tip faster.
  7. Number seven is still about bow tip; you don’t want to lean your bow in the corner of your house since they are so many objects such as broom that could lean against your bow wrong and break the tip off.
  8. Don’t let anyone other than yourself shoot your bow. The reason is not that we are trying being petty here, but different people have different draw lengths, somebody with bigger draw lengths could break your bow if you let them shoot it.
  9. You don’t need to grease your bow periodically as modern finishes are made to last.
  10. Use a bow case when you are not using it.

How to Store a Bow String

Just like the bows, bowstrings need to be stored in a proper location that is neither too hot or cold. You need to also keep the bowstrings out of direct sunlight.

The easiest method to store bow strings, according to my opinion, is to remove the bowstring from the bow then pass the two loops through each other (i.e., first loop through second loop and second loop through the first loop).

In this way, the bowstrings will be stored in such a way that keeps the number of twists stays the same, thus keeping your brace height remains the same.

Brace Height Explained

Brace height is an essential component that affects two main areas your bow: arrow speed and bow forgiveness. The brace height can be simply defined as the distance between the throat of the bow grip and the bowstring.

Lowering the brace height weakens the arrow shafts thus making the arrows flight faster since more energy is transferred into the arrow.

Conversely, raising the brace height stiffens the arrow shafts causing the bow to be more forgiving, but reduce the arrow flight speed.

A forgiving bow minimizes the error in your shooting, while unforgiving bow heightens your mistake greatly.

Which one should you focus on? Shorter or longer brace height will depend on the types of bows that you’re using.

Target bows users may want to aim for longer brace heights for, in target bows, precision is more important than speed. Target bows usually have a brace height around eight to nine-inch brace heights.

On the other hand, 3-D and hunting bows users may want to aim for shorter brace heights as speed are more important than precision for these types of bows.

To keep the brace heights remain the same aside from storing your bow properly, you also need to check for a string stretch.

Bowstring Maintenance

The basic string maintenance includes waxing, serving, and checking for string stretch.

To learn about how to serve a string, I will refer you to this article by 3riversarchery here. The article covers everything you need; they even include video and pictures to walk you through the process of serving your bowstring.

As for serving and string stretch, I will write about the topics in my next posts.