I agree that cutting off the tapered end of a back tapered wood arrow defeats the purpose of the back taper. Couple other points made here that I'm dropping an opinion based on my own experience. If your bare shafts are snapping, its most likely not because of the bow weight. They're too far out of tune. I've snapped many, because of that factor. I stopped the breakage, by paper tuning the arrows first, and then tuning with a bare shaft. Compensating for the weight of feathers makes sense from a logical stand point, but it doesn't equal the same thing as having fletching on the arrow. its not the weight there that matters. Its the stabilizing forces of the feathers. You can bare shaft with or without the tape and get great results