# Where do orient the "spine" of your arrow when fletching?



## hawk45 (Nov 9, 2009)

Let me start by saying I'm still green at arrow tuning and am probably wrong on lots of this but seems logical to me. I'm getting ready to do my first refletch of some arrows I've had around for a while. I made a spine tester to find the "spine" or should I say the stiffest side of the arrow, where the seam is located. I know these are 300 spine arrows and I'm cool if they are in the area of that number. My goal is to orient my nocks to the "spine" of each arrow so I get the same flight out of them. 

When I nock tuned these arrows when they were factory fletched the spines and the fletchings had random orientation, so on this batch I'm getting everything aligned.
Amazing how I could see those factory arrows change flight as I spun the nocks till I found the spine. Making the spine tester made this much faster.

I have be putting the spine/seam side towards the shelf (left, away from the riser on right handed bow) and getting straight flight and tight groups. One of my questions is am I doing this right? I was planning on putting my cock vain the same side as the spine, instead of on top. Since I use a drop-away it shouldn't matter should it?

So am going about this correctly? Does it matter what side the spine is oriented as long as they are the same and my sights are adjusted for said settings?

Thanks,
Hawk


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## bucks/bulls (May 23, 2010)

To many people will have to many different opinions on what's right/wrong..personally my opinion is it doesn't matter as long you configure and align each arrow the same..you will still have to noc tune and that will make the most difference all by itself..
When I build up my shafts,I always put my stiff side/cock vane up..when nock tuning I usually only have to rotate 1/4 turn or less..you also will want to invest in a squaring tool as well,and square both ends of the shaft and your inserts..


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## Huntinsker (Feb 9, 2012)

The big thing is having them the same. Personally for me, I like my heavy side either up or down when shooting with a release and either in or out when shooting fingers. That way the arrow would have the stiffest side on the same axis as the initial flex of the arrow.


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## b0w_bender (Apr 30, 2006)

Huntinsker said:


> The big thing is having them the same. Personally for me, I like my heavy side either up or down when shooting with a release and either in or out when shooting fingers. That way the arrow would have the stiffest side on the same axis as the initial flex of the arrow.


Just as a note most people don't bother with this at all but what huntinsker mentions above is how I've always viewed it. I put the stiff side down when shooting a release and the stiff side in toward the riser when shooting fingers. 

The arrow flexes up when shooting a release and out when shooting fingers. The stiff side seems to be the inconsistent area so I want that where it affects the flight the least. Bottom line though is test the arrow flight. If you really want to be retentive about it I would use a shooting machine to remove the inconsistencies out of the shot when testing the flight.


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