Brace height

Most beginner archers do not know, and probably don’t need to know, what brace height is, but some of you may be curious about it or are progressing in your archery and want to understand a few thing better.

The brace height is the distance from the throat of the grip to the string, measured perpendicular to the string.

Adding twists to your string, thereby shortening the string, will increase the brace height and conversely untwisting your string, thereby lengthening the string, will decrease the brace height.

There are many opinions of what brace height you should use, these are what I have settled on as a base…
Limb length and Brace height
70″ – 232mm
68″ – 220mm
66″ – 215mm

Having a brace height that is too high will result in a slower arrow, but don’t go too low either.

You should really check your brace height every time you string your bow…

I’ve just bought a longbow and went looking for brace height information and read one item that mentioned “fist plus a thumb” then watched a video on Youtube and saw a man make a fist and extend his thumb to check the brace height. For me that works out at about 170mm, which I’d consider quite low but will give it a try…