Just for Giggles, Tried a counter balance for stock shaft

[dirtlooter]

No pics, wasn't very pretty. I have been intrigued with both the carbon shaft and the counter balance so I thought that I could at least try the counter weight balance for the stock shaft. After looking around my scrap piles, I settled on a trashed aluminum crutch. I cut it so that I had one piece that went inside the other. The outer piece was slightly bigger than the ML shaft but for this experiment, it would work. I used a couple of the plastic endcaps of the crutch to seal the inner piece after I had the weight figured out. I basically had about a ten inch piece of crutch with some stuffing material first and then lead fishing weights added before capping.

I had drilled a 1/4" hole thru the crutch bottom to be able to run a bolt thru it and an existing hole in the shaft above the cuff. I had my shaft extended to the longest hole for me and it did seem to balance better, at least at the house. I took it out for a test yesterday and hunted for an hour and a half in the heat of the day. Now, I was feeling the extra weight for sure as time went by. For those with great shoulders and arms, the extra weight is no problem but for some of us weight sensitive people, it is or was very noticeable. the machine didn't feel as nose heavy but was heavier overall.

The reason for the two piece of the crutch was to be able to extend or retract the weight for better balance adjustment. Yeah, I took it off when I got home. Obviously a carbon shaft is lighter right off the bat and being able to adjust the length correctly to your needs is very nice too. In times past, I had access to a machine shop and would have made everything as I wanted it but those days are long gone. My shaft does not wobble and is an awesome machine other than the weight and being nose heavy. I'm sure somebody else can do a better job at the counterweight thing than I did but at least I found out that the extra weight was not for me, at least with this shaft.

 

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[sgoss66]

Dirtlooter, interesting. Do you know how much overall weight you used, in your counterbalance? Getting the "right" weight -- i.e. enough to remove the nose heaviness, but NOT so much that you are adding too much OVERALL weight to the unit, is key. IF you add weight, but not enough to remove the nose-heaviness, then it just feels mostly "heavier." If you add TOO much weight, it feels "balanced," but can feel too heavy for some. The key is striking that middle ground. I don't know how much overall weight you had in there, but if you are using the stock coil, I would have suggested about 10 to 12 oz. My guess is that would have been a good compromise between balancing enough of the nose heaviness, WITHOUT adding too much overall weight...

Steve

 

[dirtlooter]

didn't weight it, just slowly added weight. I also understand that the longer your added piece is, that can radically change balance. I used to make stabilizers for various bows so I do understand some of it. I also made adjustable stabilizers back then to get the bow to balance accordingly but they were made of steel and sometimes with aluminum shafts. Unfortunately I pretty much gave them all away and have none left. You could actually use a lighter weight but moved it up or down to get the correct effect according to how long the shaft was. A shorter shaft usually meant a heavier weight. one has to be careful as well to keep overall length from getting too long. I don't believe that it was more than 11 or 12 ounces with the bolt. Jerry

 

[sgoss66]

Jerry,

Thanks for the info. Yep, similar to archery/bow balancing...

Steve