Tuning a Samick Nighthawk

[McDave]

A friend asked me to help him tune his Samick Nighthawk, a 45#, 60” takedown recurve.  GT 3555’s cut to 29” with a 145 grain point seem to work well.

I was having trouble setting the nock point.  At 5/8”, I was getting persistent nock low.  Finally at about 7/8” I was getting somewhat level flight.  I like a slight nock high, but I really didn’t want to go any higher than 7/8”.

Just because I wasn’t really happy with the nock height, I decided to see what would happen if I swapped the upper and lower limbs.  The tiller is +3/16”.  Swapping the limbs made the tiller -3/16”, which seems reasonable.

What surprised me was that when I shot the bow with the limbs swapped, and the nock point at the same 7/8”, it didn’t change the arrow flight one bit: it was still level to a little nock low.  I don’t understand how I could go from a +3/16” to a -3/16” tiller without changing the arrow flight.

The only thing I can think of is that, while I swapped the limbs, I didn’t change the limb angle.  On the bows I have that allow for tiller adjustment, the adjustment is made by changing the limb angle of one of the limbs.  Do you think that a change in tiller as a result of swapping limbs would have a different effect on arrow flight than the same change in tiller as a result of changing the limb angle of one of the limbs?