who uses weight tubes in their arrows?

[stick flipper]

I have been looking to make some heavy arrows for my recurve. I was looking at 3riversarchery.com and I see they have weight tubes for carbon arrows. I have seen weight tubes before and I have used them with carbon express arrows before, but the heaviest I could get were 3gpi tubes. On 3rivers they have 3,5, and 8 gpi weight tubes! I would like to try the 8gpi tubes with a carbon arrow, but I am a little skeptical of these tubes. Do they mess up the arrow spine? Does anyone use them? What are your experiences with them?

[Mudfeather]

For what it's worth....I acknowledge this is not a scientific test BUT I know what I saw....

I stuffed some carbon express shafts a while back to get the weight up. I shot them along with shafts that weren't stuffed...The UNSTUFFED shafts penetrated deeper into the target on every shot. ....I pondered that a while

And the simple redneck explanation was the weight tubes were thoughout the length of the shaft. That weight has to stop and I believe it forced that shaft to bend more(when stopping) hurting penetration. I think you are better of getting a to stiff shaft and weighting the head enouhg to make it fly good.

[John3]

Adding weight is no problem at all. On advice from this sight I bought 1/4" poly rope (usually yellow), cut to length, melt the ends and force it into the shaft using a wire cut from an old clothes hanger. No difference in spine and I added about a 100 grains for pennies.

JOhn III

[jeanpaul3006]

would anyone know how much weight oxygen tubing would add to a 29.5 inch arrow,

[fireman_3311]

I use the 3gr per inch weight tubes, in 35/55 Gold tips, and they work great!!!

[fredbear1969]

i use the 3 grain per inch tubes in my goldtips and seem to fly pretty well.

[Otto]

I used the 5 gr/inch tubes in my 55/75 GT's.  Took the arrow weight from 400 to 550 gr.  No effect on spine.  For the same reason a rubber band inside a piece of conduit doesn't make it any stiffer.  It CAN'T have any effect as the tubes are WAY more flexible than an arrow shaft.

[GEREP]

I use the 3gpi tubes in my Carbon Express Terminatior Select shafts for hunting.  I take the tubes out for 3D.  Inside 20 yards, there is little if any difference.  On the longer 3D shots is where I notice a difference in trajectory.  From what I can tell, spine stays the same.

For what it's worth, when you install the tubes, try to make sure that they are a perfect fit length wise.  If there is any slop, even a quarter of an inch, over time the tubes will crack and compress at the ends from sliding back and forth inside the shaft (release and impact).  Some people suggest putting a drop of glue on one end but I like the ability to take mine in and out.

KPC

[suttoman]

I use 3555 gold tips.  I just rocked on down to the local hardware and found something that fits perfectly inside the arrows.

I am not sure if you guys have them in America, but here we have soft round plastic moulding that pushes into the channel in aluminium windows to secure the fiberglass fly or mosquito mesh.  It comes in 4mm 5mm and 6mm diameters (sorry don't have the exact equivalent for you imperial guys).

With a little bit of effort the 6mm pushes perfectly into the hollow section of the 3555 carbons.  I don't have a bow scale to say how much they increase the weight - but it is perfect.

My Whip is only 41# and here the hogs are big so I needed that extra weight for penetration.  My arrows still fly perfectly so it hasn't affected the spine.

Sutto

[6 POINT]

Even after epoxy glueing the entire length of the weight tube I found that they will still move and eventually push out the nock. I just use stiffer shafts and lots of weight up front where it will do the most good.Frank

[adirondack46r]

For what it's worth, when I finally got my carbons tuned, the noise level was still borderline unacceptable to me. So I put in the 3 gpi tubes and got my total weight up and the noise level down. It was well worth the trade off in longer range trajectory to me.

[Jeff Strubberg]

I use a 3 gpi weight tube.  I wish I could weight mine up front, but with the spines I have to shoot that would require an arrow the approximate diameter of my wrist.

No, they don't affect spine.

[keith brimmer]

im new to carbons so help me out.i just finished bareshafting and am happy with arrow flight.i keep hearing it doesnt affect spine.so if i add weight tubes i dont have to bareshaft again?

[snag]

With the GT 5575s I tried the screw in weight inserts. Added 100gr up front. Got them up to 520gr. They fly great too.

[Roadkill]

weed eater line, taped together about 2 inches apart, with a  wad in center and each end to snug them up.  quiets it down and weights them up. cheap and easy= agree-some times the nocks do pop off-just  carry a could extra in the quiver.

[Lost Arra]

If the nock pops off would you be losing some of your added KE? Not the weight of the nock but the loss of momentum of the weed eater line as it moves backwards.

[Joe Clark]

I have used the 1/4" poly rope in my aluminum arrows the last couple of seasons and I had no problem. I had pass thrus on two deer and severed the spine of a boar hog. Shooting a 700+ grain arrow out of a 57# BW PSAIII. 27" of 1/4 poly adds about 100gr of weight to my arrows. One unexpected advantage was the reduction in noise. When you stuff the aluminum arrow you will notice your bow shoots quieter (dampens harmonic in alum. arrow I guess) Also if you are unfortunate enough to drop an arrow while on stand there is no earth shattering clanging of the arrow as it makes contact with everything within a 5ft diameter on the way to the ground, just a dull thud.

One thing I want to mention is that adding anything to the arrow will affect the spine. I just think the affect is negligible in most cases. If you are right on the border of being overspined the tube/poly rope may push you over but not likely. JMHO

[keith brimmer]

ttt

[bsh_jr]

I like rope much better, but the spine didn't seem to change on my shafts when I threw in some 5 gpi tubes.  The real problem with the tubes was that the shafts broke easier, nocks blew out constantly when stump shooting and penetration just didn't seem to be what I got out of stiffer spined shafts with heavier tips.

Brannon

[Doug S]

I think the aquarium tubing for 29.5 is about 90-100 grains. It's been awhile but I think that is right.