Bare Shaft, how far?

[Dogboy900]

My G/F has just bought her first recurve which we should get next week.
She wants to do thing right and start with bare shaft tuning and work up her set up from there.

I have always just bought arrows an inch longer than my draw length and gone with the reccomended spine, or whatever I had sitting around.

She is likely to go with Eastman carbons out of a 40lb bow with a draw length of 27 inches (to the rest).

Do we buy a few shafts of above and below the reccomended spine cut to 28 inches and see what flies the best, or should we experiment with different lengths as well?

Should we be looking for best flight characteristics or most accurate flight?

Any suggestions would be appreciated on spine to use and correct way to bare shaft tune.

Thanks

[vermonster13]

Read this.

 http://www.bowmaker.net/index2.htm

[Dogboy900]

Thanks
Thats a great help.

[R H Clark]

Let me ask some questions and I can help recommend a carbon spine.

Is the bow 40lbs at her 27" draw or 40 at 28"?

How heavy of an arrow does she want to shoot?For instance, a 400 grn arrow would be about 10 grns per pound but to get a 400grn arrow to tune at her draw would require a lot weaker spine shaft to start with than if she wanted to shoot a heavier arrow.

Do you have a specific desired weight for tip weight? For instance,if she wants to shoot a specific broadhead.

Here is my best advice without a response to my questions.Only buy a couple shafts at a time untill you find what you want and don't cut any length from your shafts untill you have shot them enough to know for sure they need to be stiffer.

[Dogboy900]

The bow is 40@ 28"

As far as arrow weight and head weight go she has no preference. At the moment she is not interested in hunting, just targets and stump shooting. (I keep telling her she will want to move on to live targets but at this stage she is not interested)

[R H Clark]

She might could shoot a .600 full length with a heavy tip but I think I would try a .690 to start.Remember some of the lighter spine arrows require half-out inserts for screw on points.

Bareshaft test very close to start and take the average of many shots before you change anything as she will be very inconsistant to start.In fact I would let her shoot a couple weeks before I would even try to tune.

A person can only bareshaft tune as well as they can shoot a consistant group.In the begining her form and release problems will make it hard to tell the difference between a bad tune and a bad shot.

[Dogboy900]

Thanks, I think we will buy a half dozen shafts based on recommendations and once she is getting some groupings move on to bare shaft tuning to get the best out of the bow. Might even do that for my recurve too for once.