Shatterproof Archery, Bob Garner Recurve Review

Hey guys, Shane from Great Plains Bow Company, and today I got something special to show y'all. This is the new Bob Garner bow from Shatterproof Archery, and it's a pretty cool little bow. It's a recurve, it's a 60-inch recurve. It has a solid hickory riser, and then the limbs are black glass with a black walnut wedge coming into the limbs there. And so I was sent this by the guys at Shadowproof Archery. They're really great guys, Kazdan and Kramer, and they wanted me to check this bow out and give it a whirl, give it a review, and see what I thought of it. So in the box here, I opened it, put it together. I was going to do an unboxing, but I didn't want to make this video super long. But they send you a nice string. These guys are incredible at string building. I've been to their shop and the jigs that they have for making strings is super impressive. Really cool stuff how they do it. Really fast at it. They make really good strings. And it's a Flemish Loop string. And this string says, this string was lovingly created by Kasdan. So handmade for Shane. 55 inches. Okay, so you get a string and then there's a little card in the box and it kind of tells you the story. Bob Garner. And I'll just read this really quick. This is Kazdan speaking. It says, Kramer and I's grandpa is the reason we fell in love with archery in the first place. We named this bow the Bob Garner in his honor, and we truly believe he would have loved shooting it. It's become our favorite bow to build and shoot, and we're proud to share it with you. If you have any questions or run into any issues, don't hesitate to reach out. Helping you is something we genuinely enjoy.

We're for you.

Stay Shatterproof, Kazdan Ammons. And they truly are. Their, their customer service is absolutely incredible. I'm sure a lot of you guys have bought strings for them or different things in the past. So also included in the box, you've got your string silencers and your rest, side plate and rest material, and then you've got your wrench that comes with it to tighten it put the limbs on with. Looks like they sent me some business cards. It was well packaged, I didn't show that. So, just for— I just threw on one of my side plates and rug rests just for speed's sake because I'm more familiar with them. But today we're going to review this bow and see what we think of it. And as you know, when I do reviews, I get pretty detailed. And check it all over from top to bottom. So that's what we'll do here, and we're going to use their string that they have. So let's go ahead and open that to begin with. So this is a very well-built string. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. The serving is super tight, really crisp, and it's a pretty color too. And he's also got it labeled so you know that's the top loop, which is actually a great thing to do because there might be some confusion. Sometimes the top loop is a little bit bigger than the bottom loop, not by much, just a little bit, but it does help for stringing. So, onto the bow. The point of this recurve is the, the whole thing behind it is they wanted to create an American-made bow that was made by American bowyers, good quality, but was more affordable than a custom high-end bow. And the only way you're going to be able to do that, and I'll tell you from experience, the only possible way you can do that is simply to make it very streamlined, very simple, very economic. So you're not going to be able to add overlays. All that stuff takes a huge amount of time. The glue-ups in the riser You're not going to add that because that takes a lot of time and money and supplies. But you want a strong bow, and so that's what they did here. They put a solid hickory riser. Hickory is absolutely bombproof. It's incredibly strong, and you're not going to break this riser. I would venture to say that he's probably never going to have a warranty with a broken riser with a solid hickory riser like this. So that's where we'll start here with the riser and just looking at it, you can tell they built these pretty fast and that's totally fine. It's got, there again, it's economical and you can pick one of these up, I think they're $519, something like that on the website. So you're not going to touch that price from a custom bow company. There's none. You're not even going to get close. So they've got a nice radiused shelf here. That's really good. The, the side plate is square, but it's got— it's kind of rounded over on the back and the belly side, so that's good. And then the grip is a forward handle grip, so for those guys that like the forward handle grip, it locks in pretty good over here. Over your hand here, and if you want to shoot like this, it's got a nice flat area here on the back of the bow where you can put your fingers. So very strong, bombproof riser. Moving on to the limbs here, you got your walnut wedge here that fades out into the limbs, and that's a really good choice because walnut is— it's a hardwood, but I call it somewhat of a soft hardwood. It's one of the softer hardwoods, but it's really good for wedges because it flexes a lot in the fadeout. It does a nice amount of flexing, and it actually makes incredible limbs. So they've got the wedge there, and I'm just looking at the fadeouts. The fadeouts look really pretty, nice and smooth, a long fadeout which makes it flex a lot. And then the limbcore is engineered bamboo, or we call action bamboo. Another awesome choice for a bow. Very good choice there. Then they've got Black Glass. I'm just looking at this, just going to see what kind of tapers we have in the limb core. I'm not sure if those are tapered right off, just looking at it. No, I do not believe those are tapered, but there again, tapering the limb material that takes time and effort and money. So these guys are wanting to keep it economical for those guys that want an American-made bow but don't want to break the bank. So on to the limb tips. Those are made of hickory and there's not— it's just— actually, no, there is a layer of reinforcement, it looks like, under the hickory. You see that? Yes, there is. So they've got that reinforced. I believe that might be G10 underneath the limb tips there. So this bow would pretty much be able to shoot about any type of string that you, that you had for it. And there again, it's simple, it's more economical, it's simple, it's rounded over, nothing crazy on the limb tips, just a piece of hickory on top of your, your G10 to reinforce those limb tips. So it won't fail. The curve itself, the limb curve, it looks pretty smooth. It doesn't have any wiggles or jumps or anything that would make it want to fail, or a weak spot or a hinge anywhere. It's kind of a sloping recurve. It doesn't have a super tight hook. It's more of an open hook, which leads to a lot of smoothness in a recurve. So we're going to go ahead and string this up and see how she shoots. Here is your specs. It's 40 pounds ammo, 60-inch. This is a 60-inch bow. I'm not sure if I mentioned that. And then here it says Grandpa Bob. So that's a pretty cool concept to have it made for their legendary grandpa. So here's the top loop. So we'll just take this here tag off.

Okay.

And let's string it up and see how she works. Also, I didn't mention, I wanted to mention this, but on this card that they send, they've got these little, you can scan these little, what are these called, these things? The QR code, yeah, the QR. I always forget that. But you can scan the little QR code and this one says how to set up the bow, how to shoot your first arrow, and then behind the bow name so you can learn about the history and the legacy of their Grandpa Bob. And that's pretty cool. And they're really good about that kind of stuff. They're really good at YouTube. So here is your specifications also. Your bowstring length, I think I read that wrong when I was reading it. Yeah, it's 56. I think I said 55. It's a 56-inch bowstring. Our favorite brace height is 7 inches, and then the max draw is 34 inches. So the draw weight is measured at 28 inches. Um, the brace height, uh, you could kind of figure out what works. I think we're going to figure that out here. And, uh, let's go ahead and I'll put a knocking point on it and then we'll shoot it. Okay, so I have a knocking point put on here. Now, um, I just set this at 9/16, which is where I normally set. My knocking points. And without changing the brace, it was— it's 7 3/8. They recommend 7 inches.

I'll probably—

I think I'm gonna go just a little higher than that. No, I'll probably leave it there for now, 'cause stay pretty close to their recommended brace. Now what let's do once we have it strung here, let's see what she looks like as far as straightness. Okay, so the bottom limb is straight. That's good. The top limb is straight too. So good, good job guys. Um, see how— yeah, it's pretty smooth. It's pretty smooth. So this, this bow, I noticed on their card, uh, no, I think that's on the website. I think they have a plus or minus of within their weight. I think it's like 2 pounds. 2.5 pounds. There again, hitting weights, that takes time for a bowyer, and that's expensive. And so they're probably giving themselves a little bit of leeway on hitting exact weights. I think that's what I read on the website. I have to double-check that. But when you have to hit an exact weight, then there again, that takes time and money. This one is marked at 40 pounds. So let's go ahead and take it out to the shop and let's shoot it, see what she can do. Feels really smooth. The draw is super smooth on this bow, very smooth for a 40-pound bow. I really like it, and I knew it would because it has more of an open hook on the recurves. And just looking at it, I was pretty sure it would have a very smooth draw, and it does. It's very smooth. So let's go, uh, let's let's go weigh it and then we'll check where it starts to stack.

Okay, we're out in the shop. There's some background noise here, but, um, what I wanted to do before I weighed it is where, uh, drop back and draw it to where I feel like I feel stacking on it. So it's really smooth. I don't really feel any stacking til probably 29 or 30. So that's really good. Maybe 29, just a little bit, but it's, it's a very smooth bow. So let's see what it draws. Look at that. So it's dead on, absolutely dead on 40 at 28, which is what the bow is marked. So let's go up to 29. There's no stack there. So at 29, it's only gaining 2 pounds. At 30, so it jumped up to 3 pounds there. So it's probably— it's starting to stack there just a little bit, but that's not bad at all. So 31, it was back at 30. 30 was 45. 31, but there it stabilized. It's, it's, it plateaued. So it didn't stack any from 30 to 31, which is kind of unusual. That's, that's pretty unusual. That, that, that's a very good limb. So that's good. So 32, you're looking at— yeah, it's starting to stack pretty good at 32. But that's, that's very impressive for a recurve this short, 60 inches. That's really impressive for it to be that smooth that far out. So, okay, let's go ahead and shoot it. Alrighty, so over here we're going to shoot this thing, and I've got some different arrows here. Oh, that's a bad knock on that one. There we go. All right, here we go. So it's pretty incredible, um, feeling shooting bow. It's, it's actually really smooth, really smooth shooting. One thing I didn't check is the tiller. Let's check that really quick. The straight— the limbs are perfectly straight. Let's check the tiller really quick here. Yeah. So it's got a good tiller on it.

29.

The shelf is just, just a hair over an inch above center, which means that the tiller is sitting at about 3/16 right now. With your shelf plate, that moves it up a little bit. So it's, uh, it's really good. You know, the thing I always tell people is micro tiller doesn't matter. When the tiller is really close, the, uh, the bow will— you're not going to be able to tell a difference. It's when the tiller is like a half inch or 5/8 or 3/4 out, that's when you'll tell a big difference. Uh, with it when it's within like a 1/16 of an inch, most guys are never going to be able to notice a difference. Now this bow here, when I draw it, it's real smooth on the draw, super smooth. So, and it's really fast, really, really smooth, dead in the hand. There's basically no hand shock. Every bow has hand shock a little bit. This bow is absolutely as dead in the hand as a custom recurve. Um, And the speeds, um, the other day, um, I did check the speeds on it. The speeds are good. I'll read off the speeds that I was getting. Now, speed is super subjective. You got to remember that. It's not— speed is not set in stone. You can have two different guys and they can shoot the same bow and you can have different speeds just by different methods of shooting, different releases. Uh, of course, your arrow weight plays into that heavily, but Speed is incredibly subjective. It's not set in stone, but I'll give you a ballpark on it. Let's shoot another one here. So I'm really impressed with how it shoots. It really shoots good. It's incredible. Now, it's— right now it doesn't have silencers on it. It's just a hair noisy. Uh, that would be quieted right down. I had, I had a string on it with silencers the other day, and it was real nice and quiet. You could raise the brace height on this a little bit and it wouldn't hurt it. It's got the hooks of the recurves there. They would handle that very, very well.

Let's shoot one more and then I'll tell you the speeds that it's getting.

I got some written down here. So yeah, just, I'm really pleased with the performance of it. It's a great shooting bow. I got them written down right here, I'll tell you. So what I was getting, uh, with a 9.4 grains per pound arrow, I was getting 185 feet per second. Uh, 10.4 GPP, 174 feet per second. And then with a heavy arrow, 13.1 GPP, 158 feet per second. So that's super good speed, nothing to complain about there. And the— I have written down from before, the stack point is at 30 inches, and it really is on this bow. It's got a long stack point for the— you would think it would have a shorter stack point, but it doesn't. It, it just doesn't stack up, and you cannot feel it until about 30 inches. And that's a long draw for a 60-inch recurve. That's really nice. So super smooth shooting. You got your bombproof hickory riser, very, very tough. You could throw it down a mountain, pick it up, go kill a grizzly bear with it. So, uh, overall it's just quite an impressive little bow. So great job, guys, Shatterproof Archery. And we're gonna do another video, um, and I'm gonna do what I do on bows. We're gonna, we're gonna make this thing even better. So we're going to, uh do a little bit of work, a little reshaping on it, and make it even better to make it into a real keeper. But once again, the guys over at Shatterproof, you can't go wrong ordering from them because they stand behind their work. And if you have any questions or service or warranty issues, they're going to take care of you and they're going to answer all your questions and make you have a great experience. Working with Shatterproof Archery. Here it is, guys, the Bob Garner bow. Just a great little recurve, great little bow if you don't want to break the bank but you want a bow made by American bowyers in the USA. A price point of $519, you're not going to find a high-end bow or a custom bow— you're not going to find a custom bow for that price in a 3-piece recurve. So great job at Shatterproof, and we'll catch you on the next one.