Do you need to orient the spine on GT or CE?

[Montanawidower]

I'm realitivy new to carbons (four years).  I shot wood and before that aluminum for years.  Anyway, I have noticed some varience in the flight of some of my GT's.  I have ruled out the obvious stuff like straightness, nock, release, etc.  I started marking the arrows that didn't group and noticed they were the same arrows.  I thought of spine (like grizzly sticks) but it doesn't seem as obvious.  So.... do you guys spine GT's and if so how to you orient them.  

Thanks

Jeff

[arky714]

I heard say some guys close off the ends of carbons and float them in a tub,sounds like fun,and then  mark the high side of the arrow and place there cock feather acccordingly..gets the stiff side of arrow against bow...I have never done it but may have to try it...

[Montanawidower]

I've never floated them.  I do it like building a fly rod... I roll it bent until you feel the "kick".  My issue is it just doesn't seem as obvious on GTs as Grizz stix or fishing graphite.  Is it necessary or even doable?

[JeffB]

GT's are notorious for high spine spikes at one side. In addition they often are not terribly well matched within a dozen  from shaft to shaft or dozen to dozen. For my compound use, I gave up on them along time ago because of this. However, I will start off with some in my new longbow simply because I'm not good enough (yet!) to worry about the imprecision. You can usually get the "flyers" to pull into a group by turning the nock to a different fletch. It can definitely take some experimentation. If you do not have access to spine testing equipment I would recommend buying Goldtips  from someone like Jerry #@ SouthShore Archery, who tests each shaft, finds the high spine side and marks it on the shaft for you. he does not match them per-se, however it's much easier to nock tune them this way.

CX shafts in general have a far better Spine around shaft reading with little high/weak variation, and are more tightly matched from arrow to arrow, dozen to dozen.

The real benefit that GT has over the CX Heritage is that GT uses a 100 pure carbon fiber, and will retain straightness over time/abuse longer than a composite shafting like CX Heritage, and any of the Easton or Beman (or 3Rivers "trad only") shafts which can and will bend/take a permanent set at some point.

CX's other shafting (Maximas, Piledrivers, Mayhems, etc) utilize a pure carbon makeup, unfortunately they do not offer the weaker spines in those shafts and/or they are often too light for most traditional shooters.

[Greg Skinner]

I mostly shoot Big Jim's GT blems.  I check them through my spine tester before fletching just in case of anomalies.  Most of them are pretty consistent, but I roll and mark them for uniformity.  Even then occasionally I will have one arrow that just doesn't seem to want to group with the rest.  However, for the price of the blems I figure I'm still money ahead even if I have to cull one or two.  I sleeve them with a piece of 2216 alum and they are pretty tough. I lose more than I break.