Arrow Tuning - What does this mean?

[Rossco7002]

I'm am trying like crazy to figure out if my current arrow set up is correct or not and I gotta say I'm finding all the conflicting information and results hard to sift through.

The set up I've got is as follows:

2x Toelke Whip longbows - 49# at 27 inches and 52 @ 27, cut to centre + strike plate thickness, 12 strand FF string.

Beman MFX Classic 500 arrows cut to 28.5 with 75gr insert, 175gr head and 5 inch feathers.

What I am seeing: I shoot at 12 - 13 yards in basement almost every night and I'm pretty accurate at that range due to repetition. When I'm warmed up I can stack bare shafts and fletched right with each other. When I shoot through paper my fletched shafts show some pretty good results - bullet holes or tears of less than .5 of an inch. I'm told this is indicative of everything being good. All that being said I observe consistent nock right arrow flight on the bareshafts and have evidenced this by getting horizontal tears when shooting through paper - this has got me paranoid.

Running my numbers through the spine calculator I should have a set up that is actually a bit weak.

So my questions are:

1) Is 12 yards sufficient for this sort of testing? When I go to the range to shoot at 20+ I find as soon as I pick up the bare shafts I start to throw myself off my mental/form game which makes it hard to assess results.

2) Based on the above results do you guys think I'm good from a set up perspective? I'm 90% thinking that I am but this issue is really niggling at me and I don't have anyone local to go to for advice.

[Friend]

I only use nock left, nock right, nock up and nock when I am 1st setting up a new arrow-starting at 5 yards. After that, I ingore nock  position positon and focus on the the bareshaft postion realtive to the fletched shafts. You can only tune as well as you can shoot. I bareshaft out to 25 yards, then I fine tune with my BH's.

Bareshafting will let you know.

Tuning with BH's let's you know for sure.

[bigbadjon]

If they all hit the same you are ahead of the game. If your setup is showing weak then build out the strikeplate some and your arrows will act stiffer. I think 12 yards should be sufficient for testing. Check out A&H archery for a very detailed arrow tuning section.

[bigbadjon]

By-the-by I am not a huge believer in bareshaft testing. If a fletched arrow flies perfect I don't care what a bareshaft does. The key to accuracy is matched arrows. Grain weight can be off by a bit but spine must be matched.

[toehead]

1)I bare shaft at 12 yards first, once i get em straight i can bare shaft out to 20 with no problems.  this has always been my experience.
2)The shafts I'm shooting now out of my primary bow are week, they bareshaft week everytime and I can't cut them any shorter.  When fletched they fly like lazers, I know they are week only because I bareshafted them.  If I was hunting anything but turkey and whitetail with this bow(pigs, moose, elk, dinosaurs, elephants, rhinos) i would get a stiffer shaft and start over but for the thin skinned whitetail and turkey they fly perfect fletched and i have KME sharp razorheads to compensate for any "wobble" i can't see.

hope that helps

[creekwood]

Have you experimented with those bareshafts by reducing the weight on the front of those 500s yet, try that with 125 grain and maybe even 100 grain tips and see if you can eliminate those horizontal tears. I'm thinking that you might want to try some 400s with that 250 grains of front loading.  If stiffening the shaft by lessening the front loading works, PM me and I will send you a 28.75 inch long MFX 400 shaft with three 4 inch fletches to try. I don't have any unfletched shafts around here otherwise I would send you one of those to experiment with.

[Fletcher]

Paper tuning is best done very close, like 6-10 feet.  By the time the arrow has travelled 10 yards, fletching has straightened it quite a bit.

[screamin]

I'll bareshaft at 12 yards and when I find the shaft that flies straight I back out to 22yds. I look for straight arrow flight, no arrow turning left or right in flight but straight, most of the time when its right you can hit the spot with a bare shaft. Nock position takes care of up and down. 500's out of my 50 pound bows do not fly straight until I have 125grs up front with a stock insert. Because I want to shoot 10 grains a pound this spine is to light so I go to 400 spine. I then start at 30" or longer for length and repeat the process. I have found that 1" in shaft length compensates for about 25 grs or so in head weight. 1" long drop 25grs in head weight, 1" shorter raise head weight by 25. When I'm getting down the nitty gritty I'm cutting a 1/4" at a time.

Once the shaft flies straight a few times in a row, I fletch it and then tune with head weight. I'm right handed so if my 3 shot group goes to the left of what I'm looking at I increase weight, to the right I decrease head weight. With both my 50@28 bows a 30" 400 spine with 200 up front fly perfect. But these bows will shoot 225's too but the 200 groups are tighter.

Then I back out to 30 yds and see what happens. Now I might not get the elevation right, but what I'm looking for is if the arrows are hitting straight inline with the spot I'm shooting at. I play with the head weight 25 grs up and down and shoot a lot to make sure I'm not the problem, if there is a problem. Once I'm satisfied out comes the broadhead of choice, its perfect everytime.

[Hud]

I prefer paper tuning, but you can go to the following sites for the best information.

   http://elitearrows.com/proper-arrow  
or
   http://elitearrows.com    
then click on proper arrows

or
 http://www.acsbows.com/bowtuning.html
click on the download.

[Night Wing]

With bare shaft tuning, one has to have a perfect release. If one doesn't have a perfect release, bare shaft tuning will cause nothing but frustration and aggravation.

I like the "KISS" principle. I start out with Stu Miller's free DSC program which gives me a very close tunable arrow in about 15 minutes of time.

  http://heilakka.com/stumiller/  

I then adjust point weight up or down along with adjusting brace height up or down while I take a few shots at a target 20 yards away. This allows me to see what the field tipped arrow is doing in flight and how close it is to where I'm aiming at. Once I'm dead on and the field tipped arrow is flying like a dart, I then paper tune at 7 yards. If I can make a perfect bullet hole, I'm almost tuned. Last step, if I can make my field point tipped arrow and my broadhead tipped arrow; where both arrows have the same point weight and can hit the same spot I'm aiming at, at 10, 15 and 20 yards, my 32" BOP arrows are tuned.

I no longer bare shaft tune.

[Rossco7002]

Guys,

Thanks for all the suggestions and offers. Would it be safe to say that if my bareshafts are grouping with my fletched at 20 yds then I'm good to go despite my bareshafts flying nock right as this is likely attributable to release issues? Paper tuning shows bullets holes or minimal tearing with fletched shafts.

According to the DSC I'm way weak but if I plug in my HIT insert as a footing (I read a post from Stu advising this) then I come out looking pretty good.....

[H8nonCubs]

If your shooting at the same 12 yd distance in an inclosed space all the time and your stacking arrows but struggling outside at twenty yards then maybe you just need a little more outside practice. Are you still shooting well at the same short distance at the range?

[Rossco7002]

I'm not doing too badly at 20 yds, just that I have way more consistentcy at 12 to base my bare shaft observations off of.

[toehead]

another thing you can try (regardless of release) is how your broadhead tipped arrows group wtih your field tipped arrows.  Grouping left-stiff, grouping right-weak.

worked for me before I started bareshafting.

[Jeff Strubberg]

Originally posted by Rossco7002:
Guys,

Thanks for all the suggestions and offers. Would it be safe to say that if my bareshafts are grouping with my fletched at 20 yds then I'm good to go despite my bareshafts flying nock right as this is likely attributable to release issues? Paper tuning shows bullets holes or minimal tearing with fletched shafts.

According to the DSC I'm way weak but if I plug in my HIT insert as a footing (I read a post from Stu advising this) then I come out looking pretty good.....

If you aren't seeing a pattern of "bare shafts go here, flecthed shaft go there" at 20 yards, you are in good shape.  

One thing you might do is vary your paper tuning distance a bit.  See if you get the same reading at eight yards that you do at 12.  I always start close with paper tuning, maybe two yards away, then move back two yards at a time to around 12 to 14 yards.  If I am getting consistent tears, then I can be sure I know what's going on.  With just one distance, I don't trust paper as much.