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Who's shooting? Tuning? Tinkering?

brock ratcliff

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I posted these somewhere earlier, don’t remember where. This is from a bow I was dialing in a month or so ago. This picture show the arrow shaft is too weak with the point weight I wanted to use, so I kept cutting the shaft shorter until I reached proper spine. As you can see, the fletching corrected the arrows flight, the bareshaft shows it could be better.
 

brock ratcliff

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E42286BB-C1A2-4A08-8410-0D136AD06BCF.png

This is what you want and it’s not hard to get if you bareshaft an arrow. This bareshaft will shoot perfectly out to and likely well beyond 50 yards. That’s with a fairly heavy FOC. A more balanced arrow likely will not fly so well at distance, but at ten yards it will tell you exactly what adjustments you need to make to your bow or arrow setup.
 

Stressless

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Rgr, thank you.. I'll strip one tonight. A question? Whats the right distance for a bareshaft shot?

Dang Brock, you are a mind reader... read your comment, had dinner thinking about it and asked the question then saw you answered before I asked it!

.. and thats an awesome demo by the way.
 
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Stressless

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Ok, stripped one, 3 shots at 10 yrds. Was hurrying due to rain, first one i popped the lighted nock out so you could see the shaft.

Kneeling shot so the arrow was level each time and the camera is in line w the shot.
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And.. wow one with fletching and not... thx Brock & @jagermeister -all
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Stressless

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Keene, OH
Thx, I'm planning to paper test at 4' tomorrow and check that rest- betting on the rest. The bare shaft, I think, shows its not the fletching? Just asking although it seems obvious.
 

brock ratcliff

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Not the fletching. There could be fletching contact too, but that bareshaft shows you have another issue to fix. You would be ahead of the game to skip the paper until you have a bareshaft flying straight IMO. Mark where you rest is currently, move the rest to see if you can get the shaft flying straight. If not, return to original position and go to a lighter shaft or increase weight on the front of your arrow.
 

jagermeister

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Not the fletching. There could be fletching contact too, but that bareshaft shows you have another issue to fix. You would be ahead of the game to skip the paper until you have a bareshaft flying straight IMO. Mark where you rest is currently, move the rest to see if you can get the shaft flying straight. If not, return to original position and go to a lighter shaft or increase weight on the front of your arrow.
I agree with Brock. Get your arrow flying STRAIGHT first, before bothering with paper tuning or rest adjustment... Unless your rest is obviously WAY out of whack. You should be able to eyeball the position of the rest in comparison to the string travel path... close one eye, hold bow so that you're eye is centered with the string, and look "through" to your rest. If the rest is close to where it should be, in line in the center of the string, proceed to bareshaft tuning as Brock suggested first.

Get a good, straight flight of an unfletched arrow via bareshaft tuning. Then, in my opinion, go to walkback tuning instead of messing with paper. Draw a line or hang a vertical string in front of your target. Shoot that line perfectly at like 5 feet away... I mean PERFECTLY... split that sucker. If you miss left or right, adjust your SIGHT accordingly until you split the line. After you split the line at 5 feet, walk-back to 20 yards and try to split the line again. Don't worry about elevation, up/down... Only worry about splitting the line. If you nail it at 20 yards, your centershot of the rest is good. If you miss the line to the left, move the rest just a hair to the right (a little goes a LONG way). Then start the process over... Go back to 5 feet, split the line, adjust the sight if necessary... and then move back to 20 yards again. Repeat until you split the line consistently at both distances. Then, you can move back further, if you really want to dial it in.

I personally prefer the walk-back tuning method for testing and setting my rest centershot because to me it's quicker and more forgiving than paper-tuning. Paper-tuning can make you chase your tail if your form sucks, or if you torque the grip inconsistently, or even if your release path varies ever so slightly.
 

Stressless

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Keene, OH
Thx gentleman. Thats a load of quality information, very well described. I've got some work to do and looking fwd to it.

One the sayings I've been using recently is, "It's not magic if you know the trick." You just helped me understand, with the background, some things I hadn't.

Edit:
Put the square to it this AM and as Jesse predicted the nock point needed raised 3/16"- 1/4" or so. Did that, shot, that adjustment took the drop of the bareshaft out, still kicking three fingers to the left but almost level. Moved the rest away from the berger hole(out) and it kicked four or so fingers to the left. Moved the rest in toward the berger hole over two or thee sets and it got down to 2 fingers kicking to the left (same as the photos above).

So it's lighter spine arrows which is now a result of experince and experimentation. Also it was the first observation. Nock Point helped which was also correct.
 
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giles

Cull buck specialist
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I'll need some help understanding this from Brock or JB, but how did decreasing draw weight highlight a weak spine? Shouldn't that have been even more obvious at the original draw weight?
Complete outside view is that the problem has been there the entire time. Just overlooked. As the process is slowed down and Stress is looking into it more, he is finding more.

Last year he knew his shit was spot on and flawless. This year he went into this looking for a problem. Guess what he found?