bare shafting....ready to pull my hair out!

[fountain]

i have been trying to find the "perfect" arrow for my longbow, again.  i am now trying a 2018 and/or 35/55 both with 200 gr. points.  i mainly played more with the 2018's yesterday.  i can get them to fly straigh, but cant get the nock high out to save my life.  i have had the nock at every possible location on the string, and still cant get it.  i am pretty sure that it is me not getting the same release consistently.  i got close and was very aggrevated and went ahead and put the feathers on.  it flew good. the final arrow weighed in at 608.  i am not a big fan of an arrow that heavy and slow.  i will give the 35/55 a shot when i can pick up a few more somewhere.  i feel that they will be 475-200  grains and that may suit me better.

what do you do when you cant get it to tune out perfect????  like i said the flight is straight with a little weak and occasional nock left with a real good release, but the nock high thing was killing me.  i even broke the serving i moved the nock so much.

[rastaman]

How did it fly with the feathers on?

[trapperDave]

ignore the nock when bareshafting.  Go by where they group. my .02

[A.S.]

Try putting a nock set below your nock as well as above.

[Smallwood]

I have found that being in a hurry, usually gets you results that aren't as good as they should be. slow down, stretch out your tuning sessions over a week or two, shooting for maybe 30 minutes at a time. This keeps the stress level down, and shooting the short sessions keeps your shooting while the muscles are still strong and not fatigued.
Please try using ol adcock's method of bare shaft planing instead of watching the arrow flight or watching which way the arrow is sticking out of the target butt.
i think ol's web site is  www.bowmaker.net   or the same info is on a&h archery's site.

by taking things slow, and stretching it out over a period of time, you will be able to rule out the sessions where you just weren't shooting that good that day, or the wind was blowing a little more that day, etc.
hope this helps.

[O.L. Adcock]

Fountain, "i can get them to fly straigh, but cant get the nock high out to save my life."

That's very common. I'll put it this way...Just because an arrow flies "straight" does not mean it's well tuned or vice versa. You want them to fly where they are "pointed" reguardless of the angle the shaft was trying to get there. You have discovered a method that doesn't work, try others till you find that does...O.L.

[mparks]

I have the same situation with nock high.  Try this: get the bare shafts grouping with the fletched ones.  Then see if your broadheads group in the same place.  If so, mission accomplished IMO.

[O.L. Adcock]

Mparks, Yes sir, that's the bottom line. I'd just add that they be wide broadheads and from as far away as you can keep field points on the target...O.L.

[ozy clint]

hey O.L.- how then do you start the tuning process? do you immediately fletch a full length shaft and then try and get the bare one to group where the fletched one goes? i mean how do you establish that the fletched shaft is correct to use as a control so you can play with the variable, (bareshaft).  i'm confused. how do you tune if your not able to get consisent groups? (beginner).....hard to make an informed decision on what to do.
no doubt you've been over this a 100 times....sorry.

i too can not get rid of nock high bareshaft. but my arrow shoot well fletched.
fountain- i know how you feel  

[ozy clint]

hang on O.L. a light bulb just came on. (a light bulb graemlin would be good right now) do you tune both fletched and bareshaft at the same time, changing a variable on each at the same time hoping that they group the together?

[overbo]

fountian,
Are you putting alot of pressure on your ring finger?That finger will be sore or start to develope a calus.If so try to put the pressure on your top 2 fingers and relaxing the 3rd before the release.

[Matty]

Fountain, I bet we can help you more with this if you give us your set up. Bow weight Length Draw..etc.  You might be wasting your time with the shafts you are trying especially with 200 gr up front.
help us help you... unless i missed something here or anther post..

[R H Clark]

IMHO with some bows or some archers,you will never get rid of all the nock high.If your fletched shafts and bare shafts will group together at 20-30 yards,don't worry about it.

[sendero25]

I agree RH,
I have a 2007 Kodiak Mag that always shoots nock high (or I always make it shoot nock high), anyway, I put an elevated flipper on it and it shoots fine now.
As overbo said, I may be putting too much pressure on my ring finger with the short K-mag, or it was tillered for a plunger or elevated rest.
My longbows and Martin Serengeti haven't given me a nock high problem, and I shoot them off the shelf, but the K-mag drove me nuts for a couple of weeks.
John

[Danny Roberts]

Ignore bare shafting altogether.

[R H Clark]

Danny
When most folks shot wood or aluminum and had a lot of experience shooting both at different draw lengths and poundage,they could pick an arrow that would probably be close enough.

I think bareshafting became much more important when trad archers started using carbon arrows.With most suppliers offering 3 spine ranges to cover everything from 35-90 lbs and trad archers not knowing even where to start it was just about the only way.

Now with suppliers offering a wider range of spine and sites where we can share experience it's a lot easier to get close to start.

All that matters is that a guy can get good arrow flight and hit what he is aiming at.The question then becomes,"what is good".I seen guys say they had good flight,that I wouldn't consider good.

The only way to know for sure is to bareshaft test.

Some of us may be happy with good enough,and some of us will always be trying for perfection.All that really matters is that we are happy with the results.

[fountain]

yep--the ring finger is swollen and got a nice calous in it today!  my main trouble is my release.  i can shoot 25 time and get 25 different results.  i just cant get my release consistent and proper.  i am shooting with a clicker to get a consistent draw/anchor and try to pull through with bt, but just cant get the release down.
i shot the 35/55 a little more today and think i will give them a try.  they flew straigh and not much nock high at all.  gonna play with it a little more tomorrow

[Shawn Leonard]

If ya tell us your bow set up and how far ya draw, I bet we can get ya right on for the shaft ya need to shoot and the point weight. Shawn

[O.L. Adcock]

Ozy, "i mean how do you establish that the fletched shaft is correct to use as a control so you can play with the variable, (bareshaft). i'm confused. how do you tune if your not able to get consisent groups?"

Is there a distance you can keep all your fletched field tips on the bale? 20yds? 30? 40?...What ever distance that is shoot a mixture of fletched field tips and bare shafts...If your tuning isn't good your fletched shafts will be in the bale. You'll completely miss the bale with the bare shafts. Which direction they miss tells you what is wrong.    Take two 2" cardboard disks and lay one over the other..That's what you want bare shafts and fletched shafts to do. Slide them apart...that's what you don't want. Take 2 18" disks..Can you tell if one is off set from the other? Sure you can. You don't have to shoot good groups to make your tuning a LOT better.  http://www.bowmaker.net/tuning.htm  ....O.L.

[ozy clint]

gotcha.