Junior Bow recommendation

[pwiles1968]

I am a bit of a stranger to this portion of the Forum and am looking for a little bit of advice, My 8 Year old daughter has recently taken up archery and is using a club recurve, I think it is about 54" and 18# (Wooden Riser), She is a dot of a thing and is probably only drawing around 18 inches, as a result she has problems reaching 20 yards and often ends up over drawing the bow, I make sure she has a target at 10 yards so she does not do this but this may not be possible come the indoor season.

I have seen some Junior Risers From Rolan and Cartel Which will take Polaris or C1 Limbs? They are in the Targetcraft catalogue as well as some other places. The risers are some Composite material (plastic)

I was curious does anyone have any experience with these bows, they are not very expensive so I would not be expecting much but are they likely to be any better (faster) than the club kit? Does anyone have any recommendations for reasonably priced alternatives.

[Barndoor]

Originally Posted by pwiles1968

I was curious does anyone have any experience with these bows, they are not very expensive so I would not be expecting much but are they likely to be any better (faster) than the club kit? Does anyone have any recommendations for reasonably priced alternatives.

Paul,

You probably appreciate that the Rolan riser comes in 3 sizes, "Junior" ie around the 54" mark with junior or equivalent limbs. These are not necessarily intechangable between brands due to the bolt size/positioning. Then there is a 23 + 25" riser that takes standard trainer type limbs. Rolan do a club version and an innovation version. The latter is a limb that should be able to take a fastflight string where as former is the normal dacron only limb.

I started with a Rolan bow and found it shot quite nicely. It has a much better bow window compared to a wooden trainer bow. After moving on we have added it and a second to our personal teaching kit with nice light polaris limbs. They are quite slim and look like a real bow. You will quite often see juniors shooting them at local comps around here.

My son had a W+W Suprise that he learnt with and shot this upto well above 1st class before changing the darkside and romping through Bowman. He still occaisionaly shoots it barebow at Scouts. The suprise is around 24" and has a nice grip. The original black limbs were awful though, his delaminated and the ones we have at scouts one set twisted and the others tend to cut through end servings at a vast rate. Polaris limbs are nice on this riser. Having said that it is standard limbs so probably too big.

Not really relevant for your daughter but in my scouts we have just decided not to buy any more "jelly bows" but ordered a batch of Rolan Juniors to suit the smaller kids. At the jamboree most of the bows we used were either Rolan or Suprise, from a teaching session point of view the rolan coming in different coulours is quite useful - use the orange bow is more easily understood.

Peter

[pwiles1968]

Thanks Peter

I will let her settle with the club stuff for a bit and take her to try one of the Junior Bows.