Broadhead performance is often judged by blade sharpness and edge retention, but there’s another critical factor that determines whether an arrow punches through heavy bone or fails on impact: ferrule strength. After developing blades tough enough to survive heavy bone impacts, we found that the ferrule often became the weak point. When ferrules bend, arrows lose energy and penetration suffers, especially on hard bone impacts.

In this video, learn why ferrule strength is critical to broadhead durability, passthrough performance, and ultimately whether you recover your animal or not.

In this article, we're going to discuss broadhead ferrule strength. After years of broadhead development and getting a blade that is strong enough and hard enough to cut through bone without bending or breaking, we soon realized the ferrule became the next weak part. If you had a hard bone impact, especially a side impact, ferrules would often bend, which causes the arrow to lose energy and not penetrate as far.

Most ferrules are made of aluminum or soft steel. I found these weren't strong enough to take hard bone impacts. On Iron Will broadheads, we use Grade 5 Titanium, or hardened steel for the ferrules to get the strength we need out of the material.

Also, the geometry of the ferrule has been optimized using finite element structural analysis to make sure the walls are thick enough in high stress areas. We also have a relatively short and compact ferrule because much longer ferrules will be easier to bend. Many mechanical broadheads have very long ferrules with long slots through them to nest the blades inside. That length, and those thin walls make them very easy to bend the ferrule on heavy bone impact. 

Ferrule strength is a key component to overall broadhead strength and its ability to penetrate heavy bone. Having enough wall thickness and having higher strength hardened metals allow Iron Will broadheads to penetrate heavy bone and get you that passthrough where others won't. 

*HIT (Hidden Insert Technology) is used under license as a registered trademark of Easton Technical Products.