Alright guys, I think I have learned a great deal about tuning binary cam bows in the past few days. Once I completed this draw board, I couldn't stop tinkering around with my bow and the cams. I thought I had the cams in perfect sync after the first change, but I was wrong. After drawing the bow and shooting a few times, it still wasn't quite there. So I tinkered some more... and tinkered... and tinkered. After a day, I had installed a digital luggage scale on the drawboard... So then before I had a firm grasp on the cam rotation vs. cable twisting concept, I was looking at draw weight and how to change it. (stupid mistake) According to my scale, my bow was only peaking at 69#, which concerned me because when I bought the bow the shop scale said 73#. So I tinkered some more! Before I knew what hit me, I had a bunch of twists added to the cables, ATA was just a touch short, Brace height was just a touch long... and I had a fuckin terrible tail-high tear while paper tuning.... But by golly, my scale was reading 71# on the draw board! lmao
No matter what I did, I could not get rid of the high tear. I fooled with the rest height... I fooled with the nock height. The only way to shoot a bullet hole was with the arrow pointing at the sky. I knew this was not right. I pulled my hair out for a day, trying to figure this fugger out. Now today, I stood back and looked at my bow, cold Busch Light in hand, and told myself I just needed to start over... right from the beginning. This is where the importance of good notes comes into play. I was able to look through the notes I took while tuning, and see just how many twists I had to take out of each cable to get to where it all began... the way my bow was a week ago.
So I put the bow back to where it was and started over. I finally stood back and just thought the whole thing through. Trust me, tuning these bows is not difficult... But the concept of knowing which cable to twist or untwist, and how much, to make it do what you want was difficult for me to grasp at first. I think I got it now, but if I don't do it often enough, I'm sure a refresher will be necessary lol. Anyhow, one full twist into the bottom cam and a half-twist into the top cam ended up putting me right where I needed to be. Cams were in perfect time and sync'd right on the money. My drawboard scale is still only showing me 69# at peak, which I don't understand, but my other specs are all right on the money.... ATA dead on at 32 1/4", Brace height dead on at 7 3/4", and perfect tiller. At this point, I don't really give two shits about the draw weight.
Now after doing all this, I had the urge to pull the G5 Expert Pro off my bow and swap it out for my spare Vaportrail Limbdriver rest. I had the limbdriver installed on my bow when I bought it new, but swapped it for the expert pro due to the sheer quietness of the g5. Today I happened to stumble on some mole skin, so I doctored up the limbdriver and my bow shelf, and mounted it up. I set the rest height so that the center of my arrow passes through the center of the berger holes, and the arrow is 90-degrees to the string. Center shot needed adjusted a tad, but I'm happy to say the tail-high paper tear is gone!!! I'm still working on my grip, but when I get it just right it makes a great bullet hole in the paper. I'll be doing a walk-back tune this weekend to dial in my centershot and from there I'll have to work on the grip. It is such a great feeling to get a problem resolved and to have your bow shooting like it should... especially when you did all the work yourself!
Sorry for the long read, guys. I just wanted to share my experiences of the past week with you. It was quite frustrating at times... In fact, last night I just stood there staring at my bow on the drawboard, totally perplexed lmao... But it was totally worth it. I have learned quite a bit this past week when it comes to tuning bows. Like I said before, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to tune these bows... It just takes a little bit of time and tinkering to figure out "what does what" and how much. If any of you decide to get into this, do yourself a favor and keep detailed notes. I recorded exactly what I did to each cam, each cable, the string... and then recorded exactly how it affected cam dot orientation, ATA, brace, DW, DL, etc. Good notes are absolutely priceless. Without them, I would have just given up and took it to a shop to have them correct my mistakes. The notes allowed me to go back and re-work the problem.
A big thank you goes out to Milo... He is a great guy with a wealth of knowledge! If you ever need advice on bow set up and tuning, he's your guy!
Here's a pic with the limbdriver rest installed. That damn mole skin is the only camo I have on this bow lol.
