After testing 8 silencers I was shocked! The BEST string silencers.
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- Опубликовано: 10 фев 2025
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Very good video as usual. Assuming this test is geared towards making a bow quieter for hunting purposes (why else would you do it?), based on my experiences over the last few decades, the wool is the CLEAR winner. Simply stated, having a very quiet shooting bow is indispensable, while -12 FPS means absolutely nothing in the real world. I would happily trade even more speed than that for a truly quiet bow. Having a deer simply stand there and take an arrow and not even twitch until after the arrow has impacted is priceless for making a good hit as well as good penetration. I base this opinion on having taken nearly seventy spooky Pennsylvania whitetails with VERY slow but EXTREMELY quiet shooting homemade self-bows. No matter how proficient you may be with your equipment, and no matter how perfectly tuned that equipment is, if that animal is moving before the arrow gets there you have no "real" control over your shot placement. Additionally, when a deer is reacting to the SOUND of the shot it is reacting to something that it perceives as threatening and un-natural and of course it wants to get away from that threat. Conversely, in many cases a deer will barely react and not flee the area at all when the only thing they experienced is the poke of the impact, (deer get poked and hit by falling twigs, nuts etc. all the time) This is often true even when they've been mortally wounded. Iwould urge any deer hunters to strive for the quietest set-up they can achieve. You won't be disappointed.
Amazing test! Thank you! This is exactly what I was looking for :)
Thank you for your hard work, it's very interesting! Saved the test results for myself)
Thanks for all the hard work! I'm glad to see your channel and videos growing too. I've been wondering this Very Thing for My Recurve!
So pumped to get my new string and silencers from you guys!
Thanks for all the testing. Very interesting information.
Nate
Interesting test and good info to have. Thanks guys ! ✌️
Nice to see this test outside in the rain would be a more practical test. I believe the beaver balls ability to shed water would make them good in both aspects. I tanned a beaver many years ago & I've made many silencers over the years & I trust it's ability. Durability is a big part of it.
Really glad you did this and shared it. I am actually using whiskers, but cut short (ends up at around a q-1/4” ball) and I do notice the bow being more quiet. Also, the upper silencer is placed 1/4 of the way down from the top, while the bottom silencer is placed 1/3 of the way up from the bottom. This is supposed to help dampen the different harmonics. You have inspired me to experiment a little on my own. I’m not sure if using my phone as a decibel meter with an app will be accurate enough though. Thanks again for sharing!
That is probably the way to do it! We probably would have gotten better results had we done that:)
Thanks!
Nice video, guys. I shoot 50# Recurve Bows with a 14 strand B55 string and have a 27'' draw on all my bows. My string silencer set up is Beaver Fur starting at 8'' from first contact with the limb and Wish Bone rubber silencers snugged up to the loop wrap. This works for me just fine and dandy on my hunts.
Well done guys ! My favorites of some 50years are homemade from otter ( taken from finds of winter road kill ) and the unloved Louisiana nutria .
Very cool, as I'm sure you know, you can also get some better silencing from placing the material in an optimal position along the string to cancel out its harmonics. I personally have found that a single yarn silencer placed about 1/3 up from the bottom limb tip works well enough.
Like your content. It's interesting.
Great job.
Try them wet. Same tests
I’ve always used whiskers because of that. I’m in the south and if it’s not too cold I love to hunt in the rain…light rain of course
I also know arrow weight can influence sound as well. So the louder faster of the silencers may work great on a heavier arrow setup. Therefore not slowing it down much from the speed loss of the heavier arrow setup. Paying around with different things can be fun but also frustrating at the same time. Gotta love archery
I mix paracord and wool, works great for me, great info guys. Love your work. Hi from Australia
Hi Australia! Thank you:)
Ok this is an awesome vid. Now I am shooting a long bow so it's already quiet. but for fun I made a b55 string ( which I back splice instead of twisting ) which I set the tags back to about 10 inches from the limb ends and left the tags long plus added some more pieces of b55 to create silencers. On my 8125 string for the same bow I used rabbit fir zonker strips from the fly shop for silencers.
Nice Test, well thougt through!👍
I'm using wool puffs, selfmade, and they do not slow down the arrow as much as yours. Around 5fps.
I've used way less yarn, though 🤷
I like archery because of the compound bow sounds like it's an arrow launching device already quite enough seriously.
Entertaining vid, especially the yarn snowfall silencer. I wonder what the right tool is to measure db on a shot because the iPhone db meters seem better suited to sustained noises like vacuum cleaners in my experience. Hard to measure sound from something as short as a shot.
Great point! We were able to use the peak feature where it measured the loudest noise which seemed to work well but I am sure there some more precise tools out there
Now do the test all over again installing them in the correct positioning. Top is 1/4 way down (approx 12") on upper limb and lower is 1/3 the way up (approx 15") on lower limb. Fine tuning is usually with in 1/2" either direction on both.
Wish the bow had a clicker temporarily installed for draw length consistency purposes…but still great info either way!
Thanks.
I did a speed test 20 years ago leeches and monkeytails then whiskers. The whiskers won for speed I came to conclusion that the outside radius of whiskers weight were expanded around string versus direct weight like the rubber leech or tail
Super Video. Any thoughts as to why the No Silencers was remarkedly slow?
Nice video with minimal fluff.
U r 4 real. Thnx. Az
They left out weight of each silencer on purpose. 24 grains of wool is just as fast as 24 grains of rabbit fur, but the wool is sigificantly better at dampening sound. They also sell rabbit and beaver fur silencers so of course those will be " the best", and you can get good, cheap, light weight wool silencers for 7-9 dollars or just make them yourself.
You are forgetting that drag will be different.
I'd like to see what would happen if you control for ALL the variables.
you guys didn't mention the most important thing, the weight of each silencer. If the weight is the same, and they are placed at the same position on the string, the noise and speed will be very very similar to each other. Pick which one you like the looks of and roll with it
I wonder if a arrow heavy enough to slow the shot to a similar speed to the average silencer on a bare string compares much to the silencers in decibels, i just use heavy arrows personally but have never tried silencers, if a heavyer arrow can compete in both speed and sound to a silencer that would be perfect, obviously it probably doesn't otherwise they wouldn't exist but its worth adding that to the list
Did you test where the silencer was placed on the string, I've heard both that they should be equal, and that they should be staggered for the 2nd and 3rd harmonics
Do it again...next time add in dyneema. Whoooooole bunch of us wanna know 🤔🤔😎
You can buy a whole rabbit pelt for 16 dollars at most leather shops and make 6-8 sets of silencers.
1/2 size yarn. Try that. Go way smaller.
I yarn wrap my string in the grooves(recurve) and yes. Real wool. Not Walmart fake wool yarn. and I shoot black widow silencers. It is very quiet!
I find that one type of silencer will work on one bow but not a different silencer.
I'm curious about the location of the silencers as well. I would suspect that they would be the quietest if placed at an antinode, and have the least impact on the speed near the tips.
I am curious about that as well! Great theory:)
@@ShatterproofArchery I'm also very curious about limb silencers. One limb silencer model from Three Rivers Archery claims to make the bow shoot faster.
okay as wool is the quietest and looks to be six times bulkier then anything else... did you bother to try using a lot less wool and see how that sounded and effected speed?
WTF!
I wanted to test out whiskas this weekend and now you tell me this makes my bow louder and slower? 😵💫
If the whiskers are too long they slap together when you shoot. Not sure if this is what noise was picked up. Instead of whiskers I use the strands from the inside of bungee cords. They're a little heavier than whiskers and therefore a little stiffer. I trim them so 1" sticks out each side of the string and this seems to work well.
String silencers are all about weight and placement, then it's about bow tuning (brace height, nock point -obviously too high-, tiller, proper arrow spine)/string material and build quality (properly merging strands, twist tightness in the loops and twist ratio in the body), and then silencers material. Never considering at least weight makes all of this unconclusive
I've tried them all, everywhrere, light and heavy, single or 2x2, on all kind of trad bows. A good middle ground perf/silence is about 15-25grains a silencer. If you plan to hunt you may want more, if you shoot targets you'll benefit having less. Placement is also key and fine tuning after a generic placement can makes a big difference, it depends on each individual setup and caracteristics, grip pressure finger pressure release...
Should have compared them all with outside shots
Cut the wool down to 1 inch diameter.. its just as quiet and doesnt skow your speed as much
Question what was the gpp arrow weight. How would this test be effected by say a 13gpp arrow build. Honestly speed has less success in hunting then silence. A deer has a .05 to.1 reaction time from a sound. And doesnt matter how fast a recurve deer react the milisecond they hear a noise that is out of place. Speed of sound is 1100 fps. Not all noise is created equal the best scenero is mummfle the sound to like a natural sound. For instance deer even though they will alert from a branch falling or a smaall bird rufling in the leaves move less drasticaly than a sharp thud of a bow string. So is it just harmonics of the string or mabe a stratagey of dampaning the limb string contact. Jeff from instintive adiction archery actualy addresed this by tying cat wiskers to where the string and limb contact.. this may be a great challemge build the quitest bow incorperating hunting weight arrows. Then compare penatration and effective trajectory between a fast arrow setup. Target and 3D dont care about noise but hunting its high priority.
For anyone to answer: is there a synthethic material that mimics wool?
Wont there be a difference in sounds when shooting outside vs inside?
That is a great question! Yes I think so, we moved inside and retested the ones we had tested outside because we suspected that might be the case
@@ShatterproofArchery I also wonder. Ive used to put two small balls of white/grey bunny fur on the lower string only (about in the middle on the lower string) for a friends bow and his daughters first bow to match em, (looks awesome) works, I dunno, some at least. It does silence some, just dunno how much. Or how much speed I lost on the string. I dont have tools and such to measure, can only go by feel. But since then on my own bow I've switched to using only one (normal size) ball of fur but still on the lower string.
Maybe it could be interesting for you guys to try out and get some concrete results.
Is your arrow supposed to not nock with the string at a 90 degree angle?
No.With traditional bows the nock point can be 5/8 or more above the bottom of your arrow via the bow square.
Heavier, slower, arrows leave less energy behind in the bow to 'Twang'.
Interesting, I had not thought about that.
Some you tested inside and some outside different surroundings will not measure the same sound levels!
👂
Quiet is what I look for. Speed is LAST in the list. Accuracy, then quiet, then what ever speed it shoots. That’s one number everyone needs to get out of their brains. It is not important. Accuracy is #1, then quietness, then speed. Speed means nothing if you cannot hit what you are aiming at.
Yes
Don’t speed and accuracy go hand in hand? Not having a go, I’m a beginner, just curious.
No they do not
I’m going to try natural 🧽 sponge soon.