Cresting to brace height mark trick

[cajuntec]

I know I'm not the first one to come up with this, as a friend of mine told me about it, and I'm sure plenty of you already know this little trick... but for those that don't, I figured you might benifit from it.

My friend Curt showed me how he dips / crests his arrows - he gets his bow to his "perfect" brace height - the one it shoots best at, and then he puts the arrow on the sting and marks the arrow shaft where the brace height is.  He then dips and/or crests the arrow to that point.  This way, when he has an arrow nocked, and looks down at it, if the cresting line on the arrow isn't even with his brace height mark on his bow, he knows his string has stretched and needs to be adjusted.  It's a quick "field" indicator to help you determine where your brace height is without carrying a bow square with you.

I hope this little trick is as benificial to someone as it was to me.  I have been doing it for quite some time, and I just realized tonight that some may not know of this nifty little trick.

All the best,
Glenn

[Bill Carlsen]

Way back in the 60's I made my arrows like that...always had a cresting line of a contrasting color located at the edge of the sight window. Works great.

[Bonebuster]

Especially helpfull if you have a bow/arrow combo that is sensitive to a particular brace!  

[cajuntec]

The reason that I like it so much is because a while back I discovered (by pure accident) a little something "interesting" about my bow that I didn't realize before.  Since I store my bows way up high, out of the reach of my 4 year old, I unstring them after use so that I can store them on my bow rack up high.  I knew the brace height that my recurve shoots best at was 8 1/4", and that is where it was right before I unstrung it, because I had just checked nock height also.  Well, I had it unstrung for a few days, and when I strung it back up, just goofing off - I checked the brace height, just knowing it was going to be 8 1/4" - nope.  8 1/2".  I plucked the string lightly a few times and it settled a bit - kind of between the two - about 8 3/8".  It wouldn't settle any more than that, so I shot it a few times and rechecked - yep.  Dead on 8 1/4", and it stayed there though the rest of the 3 dozen shots I took.  Although my bow isn't that sensitive to the 1/4", I found that tidbit interesting, and so I always check my brace height with my arrow cresting line before I head out into the field with it, and that usually means putting a few practice / warm up shots through it, which isn't a bad thing anyway... puts me in the right mindset.    

All the best,
Glenn

[TimZeigler]

I crest mine at my brace height, its an easy check prior to going into the woods.