Woody Rookie Mistake

[Gator1]

I recieved a set of test shafts from Dennis at Hickory Creek Arrows, a sponsor here.

I decided this weekend to sneak into the garage and start fletching up these for spine testing purposes.

In my haste, I just realized i didn't align the Grain horizontally with the String/Nock???

Am I o.k. to shoot these for testing, I have read some where the grain should be going horizontally to the string, in case the shaft should fail???

Thank you

[pjsnell]

You could wrap the base of the nock with thread and superglue it to add strength.  Then if the shaft does split, it shouldn't explode on you.

What wood are the shafts made out of?

[Forester]

Shaft failure may be a concern particularly if there is a defect or a split starts due to impact during shooting.  However, the more basic concern is that spine is properly measuerd with the grain perpendicular to the riser - offereing the most strength and consistency of the arrow.  This helps avoid the breaking you speak of and gives the archer the consistency to do the shaft comparison testing that you are after.  If you shoot them with different grain orientation than they were spine measured then your test results may be incorrect/inconclusive (unless you measure spine relative to the nock alignement).

Does that make sense?  I'm sure I missed something there....

[trapperDave]

if youre testing for spine, leave the feathers off and shoot bare shafts to see what your bow prefers, my .02

[Orion]

Don't know what you mean by aligning the grain horizontally with the string.  The grain should be oriented perpendicular to the side of the bow, i.e., the rift or Vs should be on the top and bottom of the arrow as it is on the string.

Regardless, if you installed plastic nocks, they are shootable that way.  A lot of arrow suppliers don't pay any attention to the grain when they install the nocks.  They should, but they don't.

As already mentioned, the spine won't be as consistent;  it will vary from 2-4# on cedar shafts depending on the orientation.  Don't know what it would be on hickories.  Could be more or less.

I wouldn't worry about breackage with hickories if the grain is fairly straight.  They're tough as nails.

Of course, you can cut off the nocks and glue on new ones.  If you made self-nocks, then wrapping with thread below them is a good idea, as has already been noted.  Good luck.

[Killdeer]

If your main purpose is to test for spine, then you need to take these nocks off and put on new ones, with the grain aligned properly as you stated above.

Do not bareshaft wooden arrows. They break.

Another thing to pay attention to are the "vees" that run along the top and bottom sides of the shaft. This is where grain runs out on the shaft, each ring segment forming a little vee on top and bottom. Make the vees so that they point forward on the top, and back on the bottom. That way if the shaft fails along the grain line, the splinter will be pointed backward, and not be driven into your hand upon release.

Killdeer

[M60gunner]

What Killdeer says on all acounts. Unless you buy matched shafts in spine and weight plus or minus 2lbs. and 2 grains you will not gain anything from bareshaft tuning. Also the shaft would have to be perfectly straight to get accurate flight during bareshafting. Unless you have a real long draw (over 29in) you should be ok with arrows in your bows spine range.