Test kit procedure ? How do you start?

[Jcarroll611]

I am shooting a 60” toelke whistler longbow 45# at 28”. 30” draw. I ordered test kit of black eagle vintage. I cut them to 31.5 and put 200 grain tips in. Shooting bare shaft I am not really getting any variation left to right. Mostly vertical spreads but I have noticed the 400 seems to always be centered in the target , the 350 high and the 500/600 low. Is this accurate testing? Or should I go about another way? Thanks!

[Orion]

Well, that's not really the way to bare shaft test. And your results are puzzling.  The different spines should create some left right variation, not up down.

The idea is to take one of the spine ranges and work with it to see if you can get it to fly correctly.  One should be better suited/easier to tune to your bow, though they all may work depending on the length you leave them and how much weight you put up front.

I'm not familiar with those shafts, but I assume that the numbers indicate the spine, i.e., 350, 400, etc.  But why wouldn't the third be marked 500, instead of  500/600?  Or are yo9u saying you have both 500 and 600 spined shafts?

Given your draw length, you're drawing about 50# at 30 inches.  Some general rules of thumb are that one adds 5# of spine for every inch of draw longer than 28 inches, also 5-10# of spine for a low stretch string, which I assume is what you have on the bow, 5# of spine for every 25 grains of point weight over 125 grains, and perhaps another 5# of spine for a high performance bow design. Add all this up, and you probably need an arrow in the 80-90 spine range, which would be a .400. 

Shoot that shaft with different point weights and try to get your bare shaft and fletched shafts to impact in the same place.  You may need to add or subtract some point weight.  You've already cut the arrows, and there's no room to shorten them, so that's not an option.

If you get them flying good, and they hit where you aim, you're done.  If not, you can move to the stiffer or less stiff shaft and try again.  The 350s are stiffer so you should leave them full length to start, which makes them act dynamically weaker when shot compared to a shorter version.  The 500s are weaker.  Would likely need to shorten them as much as possible and remove quite a bit of point weight to get them to fly correctly. This is it in a nutshel, but there's a lot more to learn about bare shaft tuning. 

There's a good article on bare shaft planing on the A&H Archery web site.  Check it out. 

[Jcarroll611]

yes sorry i meant the 500 and 600 spine arrows hit very low everytime. The 400 always flew well into the center of the target and the 350 hit the top of my bag or over. I just could not figure out why the groups were vertical instead of horizontal. I shot about 20 groups with this test kit without looking at the spine of the arrow and it was the same everytime, with the 350 once in awhile also hitting the center of the bag.

[Car54]

What nock height are you using?  I always start there first and adjust.

[Jcarroll611]

1/2" nock height , should i adjust until all spines hit same vertically?

[The Whittler]

Black Widow with Ken Beck has a very good/easy video on bare shaft shooting.

[JAH518]

I would call Dan and talking to him about your results to get his input. I run a 56" pika 47lb on my fingers @ 28.5" and I had a hell of a time getting it to tune. I thought I had it right with 400 Axis Traditional with 110 ethics insert/outsert and 150 points but It just wasn't right. After several conversations with Dan I sent the bow back to him with several different Axis spines. He tuned the bow to Axis 600 spine with 75 Ethics system and 125 points cut to 30". They fly like lasers!!!!!!!! I never would have thought a 600 with 200 up front would have been even close.

[Jcarroll611]

i am going to call him tomorrow, i messed around with more point weights and got the 500 with 125 points to shoot absolutely perfect, but i was hoping to use a higher weight up front to gain some more arrow weight for deer hunting. But I guess that accuracy will trump weight of arrow.

[Orion]

Good to see you found a combination that works.  My guess is you're probably around 425-450 grains in total fletched arrow weight.  That's certainly enough for deer. 

Did you cut the 500s as short as possible for your draw length?  If not, can shorten them, which will make them act stiffer and enable you to add more point weight.  Or, try leaving some 400s full length and adding even more point weight.

[Jcarroll611]

Orion, I did shorten them after I found that the combination flew good. I think I overstated my draw length (coming from compound) and had about an inch I could cut off. I could not replicate the performance of the 500 spine arrow an inch shorter with heavier point weight. May have been due to me getting tired at the end. Anyway I ordered 500s thinking that will be my best bet to do some more tuning with . Would you agree?