I have wanted to post a message to this thread, but I had to wait because I just finished tuning my recurve so here goes. There are lots of variables to each person's bow setup that are never mentioned when it comes to finding the right aluminum arrow at a cut length while matching a recurve's poundage to drawlength. I'm not trying to ruffle anyone's feathers, just trying to get people to think outside of the box. I have a brand new 3 piece, 66" long Blacktail Elite VL takedown recurve bow. It's 42# @ 30" drawlength. The bow is meant to be shot off the shelf with a rug type rest. It's brace height is 7 3/4" and the bow is tillered for one finger over the arrow nock and two beneath. The nockset is 5/8" above square on the bowstring. I anchor with the index finger in the corner of my mouth, not my middle finger. I shoot with a calf skin tab trimmed properly to fit my small finger length. I shoot the old Easton XX78 Super Slam aluminum arrows. I shoot a 150 grain screw-in Wensel Woodsman broadhead. My field target points are 145 grains with a 5 grain brass collar to get the point weight to match the 150 grain WW. I cut and fletch my own arrows. I use a right wing Jo-Jan multi-fletcher that puts a 11 degree right helical twist on my arrows and my feathers are three, 5" long parabolic. My arrows are cut, from the bottom of the arrow nock groove to the end at 31" before the insert is installed. Most people said, 1816, 1916 or 2016 should work. Wrong. All three sizes fish tailed badly and the bowstring hit my left arm for each size. I got hold of one 2114 and one 2213 shaft and made up each arrow. With my arrow setup, the 2114 made the bowsting just slightly hit my left arm near the underside of my wrist with a 150 target point weight. The 2213 flew like a dart, while hitting where I looked and the bowstring didn't hit my left arm. But, when I took off the 150 grain target point and screwed in the 150 grain Wensel Woodsman broadhead, the arrow had a slight fish tail to it in flight, barely noticeable in flight, but I could tell. In other words, the extra length and width of the broadhead made the 2213 weak in spine compared to the field point. The bowstring still did not hit my left arm. I remember the old Easton arrow spine charts of the middle 70's. For every inch over 28", add 3 pounds of weight and since I draw 30", that brings the theoretical weight of my Blacktail, from 42 to 48 pounds. Back then, the favorite broadhead weight was 125 grains. When going above this weight, from 145-150 grains, add 5 pounds to the bow's weight. Doing so makes the bow 53 pounds. Now, today's Easton charts for recurve bows are way out of line with reality. But, I decided to use the longbow column and with a 150 grain point weight, that puts my correct arrow spine in Group G for a 31" arrow. In that group, my two choices that I chose were a 2215 and 2117. Tried both today and the 150 grain field point and the 150 grain WW broadhead fly like darts and shoot where I look and the bowstring does not hit my left arm. In other words, experiment and go against conventional wisdom and you might like the results.
Topic: What shaft size (Read 599 times)
