3 Things That You Probably Overthink as a DIY Bow Tech
August 20, 2024 by Leigh Hauck
The world of DIY home archery is a rabbit hole like no other. Within that rabbit hole are key pathways which we all must follow – the fundamentals of bow setup and arrow tuning.
However, there are some backrooms in this rabbit hole that may or may not be overly relevant to the journey, and some archers find themselves stuck in these rooms and not willing to come out. Here are 3 things that you probably overthink as a DIY home bow technician!
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Bare shaft vs paper tuning
Cue the controversy bell.
For the most part, home techs find themselves in one camp or the other. Here is the truth: both work. Those who live and die on the bare shaft hill claim that you can see smaller issues better than with a fletched arrow on paper and get a better tune as a result.
Those who are committed to paper tuning claim that a fletched arrow acts differently than a bare shaft, and since we never shoot bare shafts at animals or targets then we shouldn’t care how they fly.
To clarify, paper tuning refers to shooting a fletched arrow through paper to assess how the arrow comes off your bow. Bare shaft tuning is identical but uses an un-fletched arrow to check the same thing.
I know, they are both ‘paper tuning’ in the sense that both involve tuning with paper tears, but just accept the terminology as it is. It is the way we have talked about it for decades.
Both methods can offer identical results, but the truth is that since we are hunting and shooting with fletched arrows, we need to assess how are arrows fly with vanes no matter what. So, even if you bare shaft tune, you should be paper tuning as well since arrows act differently as soon as vanes are on the shaft. Would an airplane engineer test fly a plane without wings?
Of course not. Sure, they spend a massive amount of time engineering the body of the plane for optimal weight distribution and aerodynamics, but you can’t do all of your engineering without the wings on the plane.
If you have only ever bare shafted, try shooting a fletched arrow through paper as a next step. You might be surprised to find an issue that you didn’t know you had. Or, you might find that your bare shaft tune worked perfectly, and now you have even another point of confidence in your setup. Neither of those are bad things.
If you are like me and go straight to paper tuning – it works. Trust me, I do this for a living and have never seen the method not work. Don’t overthink this stuff too much. Make sure your spine is correct, your hand form is perfect and get yourself a good hole through paper. That is all that is to it.
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Broadhead and Vane Alignment
When it comes to shooting fixed blade broadheads, I know that there are a lot of proponents of vane and insert alignment.
The idea behind this, is that if you glue your inserts in such a way that the 3 or 4 blades of your broadhead align with your 3 or 4 vanes, then your arrows will fly better with broadheads. I have even heard people say that this is the ‘key’ to getting broadheads to fly like field points.
I am here to save you some time and effort.
It doesn’t matter, period. Here is why.
If your arrows are spine matched properly, your arrow rest is set to center shot, and you’ve achieved a bullet hole through paper using yoke tuning or shimming, then the front of your arrow has no impact on the flight of your arrow.
When we say we are ‘making broadheads fly like field points’, really what we are saying is that we are eliminating the impact of whatever is on the front of our arrow. If the broadhead has no impact over your flight, why would it matter if you aligned your blades with your vanes?
Some guys like to do this from a mental standpoint. It looks clean, it feels good. There is nothing wrong with that and I am happy that you are putting so much care into your setup – but it doesn’t change your flight.
If you believe that broadhead and vane alignment has helped your flight, then you need to take a step back and figure out why your broadhead is having any impact over your arrows flight.
When your bow is perfectly setup and your arrows are perfectly tuned, your broadhead will have no impact over the flight of your arrow. It really is that simple.
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Arrow Clocking
This time I am hitting the controversy gong, I know.
Like broadhead alignment, arrow clocking does not matter. Hear me out.
The idea behind arrow clocking is that your bow has a direction in which in naturally likes to push your arrow out of the gate – clockwise or counterclockwise. Once we figure this out, arrow clockers then fletch their arrows to match that direction of rotation. Here is the thing;
To find your arrows clocking direction, you MUST shoot a bare shaft. You will not see the true clocking rotation with a fletched arrow, because a fletched arrow is going to spin in whatever direction you have got your vanes fletched. Right helical means clockwise rotation.
Your vanes are moving so much air before the arrow even leaves your bow, that the micro-effect of arrow clocking is immediately negated. It’s like if you put a bedroom fan on the left side of an airplane.
Technically more air is being moved on the left side of the plane now since you didn’t also add a fan to the right. But do you think that the turbo propellers or jet engines care about this little fan? It means nothing.
What causes arrows to clock in one direction or the other is the direction that the serving is applied. This just comes down to whoever built your strings. Every builder has a direction that they prefer serving in just out of comfort.
If clocking mattered, all builders would put on center serving in the direction that would tend to clockwise arrow clocking (right rotation). But, we don’t. When I fletch a center serving, I always go from right to left simply because I can do it faster than when I go left to right.
We should always be using right helical vane setups for clockwise rotation for one simple reason. All inserts are right-threaded. When you hold a broadhead in your hand and spin your arrow to the left, the broadhead unscrews.
So, we want our arrows rotating in the direction that aids in keeping that broadhead tight to the shaft when it makes impact, even for left-handed archers.
If you are really concerned about arrow clocking, simply change your center serving direction. This way, you get a right spinning arrow matching a right helical and a right threaded insert.
It is much easier and faster to redo a center serving than it is to re-fletch all your arrows to a left helical and then lose some efficiency when the arrow hits an animal, it just makes no sense.
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If you have any questions or would like to discuss the topic further, please feel free to reach out to us at sales@toothofthearrowbroadheads.com
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