[ELI5] why is dry firing a bow so bad for it? Does the arrow really make that much of a difference in that regard?
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Hi I service bows(both recurve and compounds) and instruct archery(LVL 2 USA certified), I’m gonna get a little bit technical.
Bows shoot arrows through energy stored in the limbs, the limbs store energy when they are bent, which is accomplished through pulling on the string, how much energy is stored is dependent on the poundage of those limbs, and how far the bow is being drawn back, my boss always likes to explain it like this. Say you have two identical cars on strips of straight road, one has a longer road than the other and both have to stop before they run out of road, the car with the longer road will reach a higher speed, bow and arrow acts the same, the further back you pull the string, the more energy is stored in the limbs, and the longer the string has time to accelerate the arrow.
So what happens to all that energy when the string is drawn and let go? Well if there’s an arrow there like there should be, the majority of the energy(we know bows aren’t 100% efficient because bows still vibrate and make noise), goes into the arrow, and hopefully your arrow goes into your target.
We all understand some basic physics, energy has to go somewhere or turn into something, so if you let go of a string and there is no arrow, there’s only one place for that energy to go, and that’s the limbs of your bow.
That’s not all though, because you can have an arrow on the bow, and the bow will still act as though it dry fires, if the arrow is stiff but light, the mass of the arrow won’t be able to carry enough energy and the bow will sound very loud(this doesn’t really damage the bow unless done repeatedly), had a absolute unit of a guy with a 32″+ draw(that’s long for an archer), had him shoot the stiffest arrow we had with the heaviest point I could easily find, and the 60LB bow he shot sounded like a small gun going off. If the arrow is too flexible in relation to the energy being transferred, the arrow will snap in half, effectively resulting in a dry fire(also can result in some nasty shrapnel in your hand with carbon fiber arrows). The messy part is the length of the arrow effects it’s stiffness, along with how heavy the arrow tip is. So it’s not just about having an arrow on a bow, it’s about having the right arrow for a bow as well.
Now for what actually happens when a bow is dry fired, best case scenario, nothing, most commonly the bowstring will pop off, or in the case of a compound bow, the string will derail and you’ll need a bow press to put the string back on. Worst case scenario, the limbs of your bow get a crack or splinter and will need to be replaced before you can shoot the bow again.
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