If you could make a grip...

[N.Vodden]

Thats a nice shape of grip linecutter, very like the shelved pistol grip on the HK PSG-1 marksmans rifle. Have a replica of it, pride of my collection i wonder how that would feel on a bow.

Very comfortable in the hold/draw but i feel the shelf would get in the way somewhat on the follow through fall.

How does it feel to use?

[Shirt]

Belt sander left and right side and grip surface a little bit just to lower it slightly.
Wrap a bit of sandpaper round some broomhandle, shove in drill, shave down the bit where your thumb rests.
Take more off the thumb side - hard to see in the left hand photo because the TEC bar gets in the way.

Crosshatch resulting "contact surface" of bow with hacksaw so it doesn't slip.

Sorted, although I think taking a bit more off the thumb side of the grip might be a good idea... need to get another of these and play.

[Stretch]

Shirt, why the funky wee chunk out of the top left of the grip above the throat where the grip meets the riser?

Oh yeah and don't you have to say swap naff wood grip for cheapo plastic grip? Surely your Axis came with a wood grip?

Stretch

[Shirt]

Originally Posted by Stretch

Shirt, why the funky wee chunk out of the top left of the grip above the throat where the grip meets the riser?

Because the plastic grip doesn't fit the Axis perfectly (on mine, anyway, it sits with the top of the grip about a mm or two down from where the shelf starts), and that corner was sticking out... and more importantly, sticking _in_ to my hand. Not a lot, but enough to notice and irritate.

Oh yeah and don't you have to say swap naff wood grip for cheapo plastic grip? Surely your Axis came with a wood grip?

Stretch

Yes it did, I sold it. Didn't like it, felt too rounded, saw no point modifying it when I could bolt on one that I knew felt good.

[geoffretired]

I've had to custom build my own grips since I started archery in '82.
I say "had to" because I couldn't afford to have them made and I couldn't accept the ones that came with the bows(9)
What I worked towards in all of them was a shape that supported my hand in the position I considered to be the "correct position". So I started off with a very simple shape; a flat surface that was giving a low grip angle. It should be as narrow as I could tolerate without feeling "cut in two". Usually, that was very little wider than the metal of the riser at the throat. Looking at the bow hand in the right position, the index finger knuckle is higher than the thumb knuckle so I made the upper part, that stops the grip sliding down through the hand,sloping down to the right so my knuckles stayed in the same position when in the bow under pressure. As the bow is going to jump forwards, I wanted nothing to impede that action. That meant having sides that were flat so the hand didn't have different thicknesses flying past. If I altered my grip, I wanted feedabck from the grip, so the left and right edges were kept quite sharp. If I pressed too much on one side, the edges let me know. When fitted properly into the grip, my hand was untroubled.
Having produced the simple shape, I frequently experimented with the slope by putting a well- matched wedge on the original slope. This could be carved a little at a time until best results were achieved. A very simple shape compared to the ones seen on many bows until very recently.

[ASW1973]

I would never take an archer seriously who did not in some way alter the stock grip on a bow. These fit only the person who designed them and even then it is debateable
It is the only interface betwen the archer and the bow and as we all have different shaped hands we can not expect to put our bodies in the right position by using a grip that does not facilitate this.
Whatever you desire in a grip it must achieve two things at least,
1: facilitate consistent shot execution due to its shape fitting the individual
2: give +ve feedback on hand position (tell u when it is right, not when it is wrong) and therefore allow a totally replicable position

[Dave St]

I took to some parts of my handle with a sander, and then built up the other parts with plastic padding. After a bit of sanding etc I was left with a grip that applied pressure the desired part of the hand.
I found before the modifications there was too much pressure on the web between thumb and first finger and also below the fleshy part of the thumb on the palm.
Only took around an hour but the improvements.......
Dave

I'm sure you are aware that Hoyt do offer the matrix plastic grip in wood too. About £14.00 from quicks the last time I bought one.

With regard mods to a grip I have done this with the mouldable epoxy putty called milliput. Works great and dries rock hard. can be drilled and worked as good as wood. The shape you choose is very personal. Experimentation is the only way. As a compound shooter, grips tend to be the least amount touching the hand as possible to avoid torque, so I tend to prefer the riser to be the grip.

I once made a grip the shape of my hand when I was holding my recurve bow, It felt great but bow torque was awful.

Had to take the shoulder off the really bad plastic 'pistol ' grip that came with my aerotec, after spending some time working on it with a wood rasp and emery paper it's now very easy to repeat my hand placement and feels like my old bow handle that I loved

Been through the 'putty phase' but was totally crap at it

[LineCutter]

Originally Posted by rgsphoto

I'm sure you are aware that Hoyt do offer the matrix plastic grip in wood too. About £14.00 from quicks the last time I bought one.

Davros has the woodworking kit to get the internal fit right & I'm reasonably sure that I know what I want from the external fit. That means I can make it pretty, as well as functional
We were talking about the choice of wood last week...

BTW, the air pistol grip shown earlier is a bad model for a bow grip, just in case rgsphoto hadn't made it perfectly clear.