# Question re: 3D arrows and tuning



## SonnyThomas (Sep 10, 2006)

Explain DW..... 

Did you read this > http://www.archerytalk.com/vb/showthread.php?t=2424160


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## JV NC (Dec 9, 2005)

DW = Draw Weight

It was sort of a joke. I'm not sure what DW you'd need to be pulling to match the dynamic spine of a 30X arrow.

Yes. I read the link. Unless I missed it, it only says it's possible. I can't figure out HOW it's possible.


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## Mahly (Dec 18, 2002)

Oddly, I am shooting XXX (150 spine) arrows out of a #50 bow, and they bare shaft just dandy.


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## SonnyThomas (Sep 10, 2006)

30X GTs....Kind of stiff, yeah  If the fletched arrow is accurate then it's accurate. My bare shaft tuning results back in April 2014 sucked with my MarXman. I went with the French tune procedure that same week of bare shaft failure and took 2nd place in that weekend's 3D. My worst finish last year was 4th at a ASA Qualifier.


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## JV NC (Dec 9, 2005)

How about paper tuning bare shafts with a spine index of .200 ?

What should I expect?

Fletched was perfect. Bare shaft was a low tear (minor).

I have a feeling I know what is causing it, and I don't mind sounding the fool. So, I think the nock is seated too tightly on the serving (new strings and cables). Could this be the cause of the low tear?

If it is, I'm assuming I can sand a little on the throat of each until they don't stick too much.


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## Padgett (Feb 5, 2010)

Most people do things with their approach to tuning that really restricts what they can actually can do to alter the arrow flight, things such as:

1. setting their knock height to some pre determined location that in their mind is correct.

2. lack of attention to the cam lean, problems arise when you set some amount of pre lean to the cams because somebody told you to do it.

3. getting some center shot number given to you and not really understanding the number and trying to set it there and then not moving it.

4. getting lost in tiller tuning which is a debatable use of the limb bolts in the first place.

5. Nock pinch because a lower nock set isn't used

6. grip torque which causes the strings to come off the cams at a angle instead of nice and straight.

7. A rest that has a spring that is way to stiff and there is no forgiveness in the launcher weather it is a stiff blade or limbdriver or prong style.

I can continue the list but I am going to stop, the biggest issue is the one where guys set their nock height before actually shooting the bow. Finding the sweetspot for your d-loop is so important for your arrow flight and once you find this spot then everything else will fall into place with only a couple tweeks here and there. Without finding the sweetspot for the nock height you are going to be forced to make big adjustments in other areas to cover up the incorrect nock height.

Good tuners are in touch with all of the areas of tuning and don't rely on one thing such as yoke tuning, sure yoke half twists are one thing that a guy should consider but it isn't the answer to every problem. But when you serve in a nock set and install a d-loop on your bow string and then you shoot your first few arrows you may find yourself needing tons of twists to correct the problem because you created the problem with the installation of the d-loop.


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## JV NC (Dec 9, 2005)

The only "problem" I have is a very slight low tear with the bare shaft.


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## Padgett (Feb 5, 2010)

My new cpxl was a freak of nature, I took it out of the box and took my favorite limbdriver rest off my specialist and put it on the cpxl I attached the cord to the limb and went with a bare shaft to the paper tuner and for the first time ever I shot perfect bullet holes with a bow right out of a box with the rest still in another bows setting. I shot that bow for the rest of the season and then a month or so ago I got my new string set for this season and installed it. I did all the measurements and tried to get things the same to help make my tuning process a quick one but it had a high right tear about a inch. I tried to just do a few things and not move the d-loop but nothing worked so I just stepped back and got my mind straight and did what i always do, i found the sweetspot for the d-loop first and then went through all of the other little tricks that I have and the right tear never changed. The sweetspot of the d-loop took care of the vertical part of the tear but nothing would change the right part of the tear so i put two half twists in the yoke on the right side and there it was my perfect bullet holes with my bare shaft at 6 8 12 15 20 feet and I said done.

The key to that tuning session was that I stepped back and started with what I know is the first step and then I went through each and every one of the tricks that i know and I watched the effects or lack of effects that they had on the arrow flight. Then I went to the yoke. If the yoke hadn't worked then I would have went back to all of my tricks and made sure that I didn't miss something in one of them.


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## Padgett (Feb 5, 2010)

So after reading all of the responses that I have given you have you moved the d-loop up and down the string to find the location where the low or high tear vanishes or did you put it on and then try and move the rest or something else such as tiller tuning?


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## Padgett (Feb 5, 2010)

Keep in mind that when you get into bare shaft tuning that it takes perfect executions because the bare shaft shows everything.


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## JV NC (Dec 9, 2005)

I didn't touch my rest. I can't get the SLIGHT low tear out. What I haven't tried is making the throats of the nocks a little wider, so they're not getting stuck on the string.

I'm just trying to understand why you're citing 15 things that I probably did wrong.......when I have a slight low tear with a bare shaft.....and nothing else.

And, while we're at it..........if an arrow's index is .200, are you implying the arrow doesn't deflect....if you're in perfect tune (even though you're only pulling 60#'s draw weight)?


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## Padgett (Feb 5, 2010)

Man, I am just sitting here in missouri and not with you so I have no idea what you have tried to do change your low tear. Those are just a few of the things that I look at when I am tuning a bow and most of the time i don't have to do them but I can at least look at the bow and see if one of them is the issue. Now some of them are must do things such as moving the d-loop up and down the center serving, I like to move it from level to slightly above and somewhere in there will be the sweetspot where it produces no vertical issues. Then I can work on the left or right tear.


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## JV NC (Dec 9, 2005)

So.....any suggestions on how to fix (only) a low tear that only shows up with a bare shaft?


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## Padgett (Feb 5, 2010)

Move your d-loop up the string.


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## JV NC (Dec 9, 2005)

I'm just asking.....but, you can suggest that, without knowing how much (or "if") the nock is already above the rest?

What if it's already 1/8" above center line of the arrow? Wouldn't that only compound the arrow spine issue (if it is an issue)?

I could play with nock height a lot with my Schafer Silvertips. But, I wasn't shooting a .200 spined arrow, either.


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## Padgett (Feb 5, 2010)

I just tuned my specialist with a 150 spine arrow just a while back so all I can tell you is that I spend about a hour on my initial setup of a new string set getting things twisted up where I like them and then in less than 20 minutes it will be shooting bare shaft bullet holes at every distance from 3 feet all the way to 20 yards. With the same bow that you are tuning. I have shot that bow with 400 and .297 and 250 and 150 spines from 64 to 49 pounds of draw weight and a variety of shaft lengths and point weights and it always responds and gives me perfect arrow flight.

It could be a lot of things, just a few days ago a indoor buddy of mine had a funny tear and he asked me to help and I found that his limb driver had so much spring tension in it that if you layed the arrow on it and let go it would launch the arrow about 4 inches above the rest. He didn't even know it was possible to change the spring tension so I spent 15 minutes working with his bow and for the first time he had something to be proud of. He had also claimed that his bow shop had a good tuning shop guy, after he worked with me he said that he had no idea that there were so many little things that could affect arrow flight and his normal shop did none of them.


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## Padgett (Feb 5, 2010)

Pay close attention to the fact that I spend a hour setting up a new set of bow strings, this has nothing to do with arrow flight. It has everything to do with getting factory specs and cam lean and cam sync and draw length and draw weight and timing all working together at the exact same time. This is why I can spend 20 minutes messing with my arrow flight and be done and get on with shooting. If the bow isn't set up in a way where you have a even playing field to start out then you end up chasing your tail and you may move the d-loop up the string and the vertical tear doesn't respond correctly because something else is wrong such as cam sync. I can't stress enough that cam sync on s bowtech must be perfect, the timing marks mean nothing when it comes to tuning. They are good reference marks to tell you if something has changed if you are shooting for a few weeks since your last tune but other than that they are worthless.


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## Cris Anderson (Oct 22, 2014)

JV NC said:


> I keep hearing people talk about bare shaft tuning. I don't know about you, but I've never been able to shoot enough DW to have a properly tuned bow/arrow marriage with a 30X fat shaft.
> 
> How does this work with these heavily over-spined arrows?


To answer your original question...it seems to work for me just fine. My bow is set at 65lbs (Xpedition Xcentric), I'm a 27" draw, and my two arrow setups are 25.25" carbon to carbon VAP .350's, and 25.25" carbon to carbon BEA X-Impact .250's. The VAP's are 370g with around 24% FoC, and the X-Impacts are 550g with 31% FoC. I'm aware that these aren't target arrows, but the .250's are nearly .100" over on the dynamic spine, and both are off the charts for typical spine recommendations.

Process was simple.

Set nock point level with the berger holes (to start).
Set top cam lean to vertical at full draw.
Set arrow rest centered on the string.
Shoot close range to set sight windage.
Shoot long range to set arrow rest windage (I've never needed much adjustment from center, and I loosely set sight elevation here also).
Verify sight windage at close range again.
Fire bare shafts with fletched, maintaining proper grip.
Micro adjust arrow rest to correct left/right impact first.
Twist or untwist control cable to correct vertical impact (never needed more than one twist in either direction assuming the bow was timed/synced to spec to begin with).
Retest bare shafts and adjust until content.
Micro adjust sight elevation for perfect impact.
Fire through paper to verify perfect arrow flight.

This has worked on six different bows so far...all shooting over spined arrows.


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## Padgett (Feb 5, 2010)

The nice thing about the specialist is that it shoots awesome even when it isnt tuned very good, in the summer i refuse to look at the arrow flight with a bare shaft or paper tuning because I will be hitting dead on perfect so I will go to a asa event or local shoot and then when the weekend is over if I have a day where I can tune it I will get it back to perfect and then spend a few days sighting it back in for the next event. Just this winter in november I shot my best indoor shooting ever and saw my first 300 29x vegas round and just before x mas I put it in the draw board for the first time since august and my draw length had stretched to a half inch longer than it should be. It took 15 full twists to get it back to correct and nothing was right, timing marks and poundage were all way off. The only thing that was right was the cam sync.

I did all that twisting to get everything back to their spots and I stepped up to the line and expected to have to sight it back in and it was still dead on. This is the beauty of the binary cams that many other systems can't compare because top and bottom cams are identical and the cables are the same so as things stretch they usually do it and things get longer but remain perfectly synced.


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## JV NC (Dec 9, 2005)

Padgett said:


> Pay close attention to the fact that I spend a hour setting up a new set of bow strings, this has nothing to do with arrow flight. It has everything to do with getting factory specs and cam lean and cam sync and draw length and draw weight and timing all working together at the exact same time.


Exactly our routine, yesterday (1.5hrs)

We shot the bow, today, for the first time.


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## Padgett (Feb 5, 2010)

Awesome, it won't take long and you will see the little things that you new bow likes and dislikes.


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## tmorelli (Jul 31, 2005)

I haven't read all the replies but....

Spine is but one small factor in bare shaft tuning. There is a broad range of spines that many bows will bare shaft. 

The primary factor that bare shaft tuning illustrates is nock travel in the bow. Spine only works with, or against the nock travel. So, stiff spines can be tuned by removing nock travel....weak spines can be used to mask nock travel.


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## unclejane (Jul 22, 2012)

JV NC said:


> I'm just asking.....but, you can suggest that, without knowing how much (or "if") the nock is already above the rest?
> 
> What if it's already 1/8" above center line of the arrow? Wouldn't that only compound the arrow spine issue (if it is an issue)?
> 
> I could play with nock height a lot with my Schafer Silvertips. But, I wasn't shooting a .200 spined arrow, either.


Just my suggestion, what I would do is go ahead and move the knocking point up until you get rid of the knock low condition. At that point, get out the bowsquare and see how far you are above knock-level. If you end up 1/4" high or more for example, like I was on my Hoyt, you can then start to suspect a cam/wheel timing issue.

To check that, then do a creep tune. Pull back hard into the wall with a bareshaft and see what you get. My guess is there's an about a 65% chance that particular shaft will go into the bail way knock high.... But worth a shot to see what you got.

PS: I shoot 30lbs draw weight on both my bows with GT ultralights at 28.5" in 400 spine, 85 grain points, basically way too &&&& stiff. But overly stiff arrows can tune fine with a release aid. So you should be ok with your arrows.

LS


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## SonnyThomas (Sep 10, 2006)

Title; "Question re: 3D arrows and tuning"

3D arrows. How accurate is your rig out to 45 yards? If accurate why worry about spine and bare shafts?


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## Cris Anderson (Oct 22, 2014)

SonnyThomas said:


> Title; "Question re: 3D arrows and tuning"
> 
> 3D arrows. How accurate is your rig out to 45 yards? If accurate why worry about spine and bare shafts?


I'm no pro...I'm barely a beginner. That said...my answer to this is because after bare shaft tuning my bow, small inconsistencies in my form seem to affect my accuracy a LOT less than they did before. Maybe that's not important to some of these guys who obviously have amazing and repeatable form that's been turned to muscle memory for years on end. But for me...it makes my bow much more forgiving to the human factor which is me.

Hope that makes sense.


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## SonnyThomas (Sep 10, 2006)

Cris Anderson said:


> I'm no pro...I'm barely a beginner. That said...my answer to this is because after bare shaft tuning my bow, small inconsistencies in my form seem to affect my accuracy a LOT less than they did before. Maybe that's not important to some of these guys who obviously have amazing and repeatable form that's been turned to muscle memory for years on end. But for me...it makes my bow much more forgiving to the human factor which is me.
> 
> Hope that makes sense.


My first question was to the OP and him stating 3D, but okay, the question remains; How accurate is your rig out to 45 yards?" 45 yards is max in NFAA. 40 yards covers the vast majority of classes in ASA... If only shooting 3" groups at these distances you're in the ball park with the vast majority. It's then the Indian.....

I noted I failed trying to bare shaft tune my bow. I've also noted I fletch my arrows to the blemish line inside the arrow shaft which is blatantly slammed as not the spine. Ask me if I care when I place and win at virtually 3D I attend...Again, my worst finish last year was a 4th at a State ASA Qualifier. I've slowed down, 15 to 20 events per year, maybe. 

The OP noted string nock position, height. Height is a misnomer. One of the worst bows I have is also one of my most accurate and with a 3/8" string nock setting. Timed to perfection and draw stops set so perfect we could measure compression of the O-rings. More of first run bow it was sent back to the factory for inspection. I had noted scratches in the bottom limb and the factory replaced the limbs and installed new strings. Bow back it was checked thoroughly and all through set up. Again, for reasons beyond all involved a 3/8" high string nock setting was found to give best results.

If I was to correct the bow it would be through putting it out of time or tiller tuner tuning. Why when it shoots great with a 3/8" high string nock setting?


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