I received a Rocky Mountain Recurve about seven months ago. The weather was lousy but I couldn't wait to put a few arrows through it. I strung it up and went out into the cold to play with my new toy. First arrow-18 to 20 inches right of aim, second arrow - same thing third arrow- same thing. Well darn, I unstrung the bow and broke it down, deciding to wait for better weather to try and figure out what was going on. This wouldn't be an easy fix and being so far off was, in my opinion, not a matter of an arrow being too weak spined. I had just been through a similar situation with a bow that I had intended to "pass it forward". On the day that the young man was to drop by and make his choice of bows, I decided to string the three of them up and cast a few arrows and generally get them ready for him to try. Two of the bows shot fine but the third, an old but clean Darton Ranger cast an arrow that would leave the bow and suddenly dip down and to the right about a foot. I tried a few things such as shimming the backplate with a matchstick and changing the nock height, but the bow just would not shoot. That was a couple of years ago and that bow still has me stumped to this day. I really liked the look of the Rocky Mountain and decided that I had to figure it out. Too much bow there to be occupying rack space and not enjoying.
Fast forward six months. Work has slowed down and I have no excuse not to tackle the tuning problem. My thoughts were to get the bow where the nock height was on and try to pull the arrow over to the left with shims until it at least hit the side of the target. I took the old back plate and rest rug off of the bow, aggravated that whomever had put them on used what appeared to be hide glue that had aged and become brittle but still had enough stick to it to not want to peel off with a fingernail. Ever so carefully I scraped the sight window and shelf clean, then sanded away the scratches with some 600 grit wet sandpaper. I put a new rug on the shelf and then taped various thickness of rounded spacers onto the sight window until I found one thick enough to get the arrow hitting within six inches of point of aim. Now it was time to start playing with different arrow spines and tip weights and finish up the tuning process.
This is what I have found in two days of messing with this old bow. It doesn't seem to matter much what spine of arrow I use. I have run 500, 400, and 340 through it. Still six inches to the right of aim. I have changed brace height from 7" in small increments up to 8 1/8" I set up a frame and shot some arrows through paper. This showed me that I needed to lower the nock point just a bit. Now I am getting a nice horizontal tear showing nock left. I don't have any bare shafts to try other than a carbon 45/70 Cabelas arrow that was in my compound bow stuff. I tried it. Almost identical to the fletched arrows and it should be about as heavy a spine arrow that I would need.
So now I test for arrow contact. Yep, and not just a little bit but enough to scrape the top grain off a piece of leather with just a few shots. Now that I know what is causing the nock left/six inches to the right impact...I'm stumped. Trying to think things through, it seems to me that my arrow is not bending in time to clear the sight window, or the bow is built so much different than the other bows that I use frequently that I am torqueing the bow.
I would appreciate any thoughts that you all may have.
The bow-Rocky Mountain Recurve- Personal
46#@28" The bow measures 60" Present brace height 7 3/8"
My draw length is 29 3/8"
All arrows are cut to 30 3/8"
The arrows are Traditional Only carbons in 500,400, and 340 spine. I have six arrows in 400 spine that are Bemans and they have the 75 grain brass inserts and I presently have 125gr. field points on them.
Topic: Arrow hitting riser (Read 558 times)
