"And maybe eye protection."

Yes, good point.
I wear glasses as a simple fact of life, so I often forget to mention eye protection.

I get what you are saying about hockey sticks though. They are actually stressed more than most bows are and are more likely to shatter in a big way.
When I have seen glass bows fail they usually do it by one of two ways. By raising slivers or splinters on the back, or by delaminating on an internal shear line. Neither of these failure modes are explosive deconstruction, but it is far better to be safe than sorry.


The plastic vanes for fletching are quite flexible, more like rubber than plastic, but they are still more likely to cut the skin on your bowhand than feather fletching is if your arrow comes off the shelf of the rest when you release it. So a glove as well as the arm brace.

The reason that many people advise against using plastic fletching on a shelf type arrow rest is they are afraid it will bump going over the rest and throw the shot off.
The cure for that is to nock your arrow onto the string a little above the height of the shelf. I learned that when shooting traditional stick bows with my knuckle as the arrow rest.
Until you get the nock height adjusted for your arrows there is a good chance they will hit the shelf or your hand as they leave the bow.


This page was written for a compound bow, but it explains a bit about spine weights and nock heights.
http://www.martinarchery.com/o_manual/2004manual/finetune.html

This page gives a better description of how to set the nocking point
SUAC - Bow Tuning