Bad Arrow flight

[Dominant Spike]

Hi Im a new member to tradgang and currently am living in Southeast Alaska. I have been building my own arrows for around a year, and started experimenting with sitka spruce in the last 3-4 months. I built a dozen arrows for my dad, who shoots a 58# recurve bow with a 29inch draw length. Four of the twelve arrows shoot about 2 feet to the left at 10 yards. The rest shoot fine. Any idea as to what is going on?  

[moebow]

Put the arrows on a spine tester.  I'll bet that you have significantly different spine readings on the four that are left.

[Dominant Spike]

A Spine tester is currently unavailable to me at this point. My family and I are moving back to Pennsylvania in two weeks. Any suggestions on what to do till then? Would shortening them help?

[Ragnarok Forge]

shooting left indicates a stiff arrow.  You can glue on a heavier head but that will change vertical impact point.

[xtrema312]

Originally posted by Clay Walker:
shooting left indicates a stiff arrow.  You can glue on a heavier head but that will change vertical impact point.

If you are right handed left is stiff.  You can make a spine tester with a couple of home made rollers and a weight.  You don't even need to be technically accurate to AMO or anything.  It will not be real accurate, but you should see a difference if it is a big variations in spine.

[Don Stokes]

Make sure the nocks are perfectly straight on the offending arrows.

[Dominant Spike]

Thanks for all the advice! xtrema312, how do you make that spine tester?

[moebow]

Support your shafts on supports that are 26 inches apart.  measure as accurately as you can the distance from the shaft to the table below it.  Now hang a weight of about 2# at the center of the shaft between the supports. One of those deep sea halibut sinkers may work. Now measure the distance to the table.  The difference is the deflection distance you're looking for.  This measurement must be a precise as you can get it!!  A .6 inch deflection will be about 43#, .5 about 52# and .4 about 65#.

Howard Hill wrote that he grouped his arrows by shooting.  He'd build a bunch of arrows then shoot them and then bundle arrows that grouped together so that his arrows in a bundle would shoot the same.

Also, when you made the arrows, are all the annual rings in the shafts oriented in the same direction??  If the annual rings on some arrows are perpendicular to the bow and some parallel to it, The arrows will show a different spine.