atlasman

Kinda funny that I started a tuning thread after paper tuning my setup last night............because I seriously F' KD my bow up and I have no idea how []

Last night I paper tuned and had a slight left tear. I moved the rest a hair to the right and bullet holes. I then sighted in my new Copper John Dead Nuts out to 30 yards and was shooting good clean straight flying groups of 3-4" at 30 yards.

I shot for about a half hour and put my stuff away very happy with the way I was shooting.

Today my brother and my friend came over to shoot at 2 McKenzie targets I have........we walk around and play P-I-G like basketball.......farthest from the X-ring gets a letter.

Anyways..........I shot a couple arrows from 20 yards just to warm up and barely hit the target in the very bottom of the chest (about 8-10" low)........I was surprised and not very happy because I knew something was wrong........I don' t miss that bad from 20 yards and definately not twice in a row.

I think I may have not tightened my NAP Drop Away enough and when it fell the forks moved down........I raised the forks and it shot better but with bad arrow flight......my arrows were cork screwing and it just wasn' t pretty.

It was too late to worry about it tonight but if anyone has any idea what the hell I could have done feel free to speak up..........I don' t know how the hell I went from shooting tight groups at 30 yards to shooting cork screwing lame ducks without even touching my bow.


Should have just left the damn thing alone [:@]

Arthur P

Unfortunately, paper tuning does no such thing. If that' s what you' ve got confidence in, great, but there are plenty ways to shoot bullet holes and have a totally screwed up tune. Like the guy at the shop that decided to tune my bow for me and got it to shoot bullet holes with the nock set nearly an inch below square. Tiller was ALL screwed up. Or the single cam bows that have a sweet spot that will give you bullet holes with centershot set way off into the riser. Or overspined/underspined arrows with the centershot adjusted way off to compensate. Or an out of time cam with nock height set to compensate. Or a rest set too stiff with a compensating nockset. Or various combinations of all those things.

All will give the mythical bullet hole with the bow not even close to being adjusted to give best performance and accuracy. Paper tuning is WAY over emphasized. It' s only a starting point for more refined tuning, and it' s a starting point that is much more easily accomplished, with a lot less stress, by other methods... like bareshafting.

c903

Arthur:

A little drastic and too encompassing, Maybe not for you, and maybe not for others, but definitely for me and definitely for others.

If a bow actually had as many maladjustment' s as you have described, and having shot several strings nothing ever showed up on paper, I would ship that bow to " Ripley' s." Someone does not know how to paper-tune or to read the paper.

However, tuning a compound bow and accessories starts before the first shot into paper or foam. I don' t know what experiences you have had, but when I step up to shoot the paper, I know there will only be a few adjustments to make to obtain " bullet holes" if I am not getting them e.g., draw-weight adjust, nock height adjust, and centering rest

One advantage of not trading bows every year, and having (nearly) the same type of bow if you have more than one, is that you soon know the best settings for the bow even before you shoot. Until you do thoroughly know your equipment, there are tuning aspects that are universal before tweaking occurs.

I know that some very good shooter use the " bare shaft" method, but not me. You could not pay me to shoot a bare-shaft from today' s high-energy bows. A shaft could bend, or blow up on release and cause serious injury. The method, in my opinion, has to be hard on bow limbs. I find the paper more exact when it comes to reading shaft flight.

Straightarrow

Atlasman,

I shoot through paper only to get close, and I usually get close enough by eye with my settings, that I don' t even adjust my initial settings from the results of shooting through paper.

I then put a vertical line on a target and adjust my sight so I' m hitting this line at 20 yards. I move back to 40 yards and shoot at the same line. If I' m hitting the line, then my centershot is right on. If not, then I move my rest left or right, depending on where my groups are. I' ll have to re-adjust my sights and go back to 20 yards and start this process over. Once I have everything fine at 20 and 40, I go back to 60 yards and shoot a few arrows, just to confirm that centershot is where it should be.

Next, I put a horizontal line on the target. I do all this testing from 40 yards and further. The object is to shoot arrows that are the same distance from this line. Shoot at this line and measure average distance from the line. Move the string nock up or down slightly, re-shoot and see if the average distance is more consistant or less. Keep repeating this until you get your arrows forming their own horizontal line. This can take awhile to get this portion right. As a note, I don' t like to move my rest vertically. I set it initially, so the arrow goes through the center of the burger button hote, and move my nock up or down to tune. I use string nocks or string loops which are easily threaded up or down the string in very small increments. This is far easier and accurate than adjusting most rests.

At the end, I bareshaft tune for spine. I take a bareshaft and add masking tape to the fletching area, in an amount that equals the weight of my fletching. I shoot the bareshaft and adjust only two things when doing this. One is draw weight and the other is rest tension (if the rest has this adjustment). Lowering or raising draw weight will cause the arrow to fly quite differently. Adjust this until the arrow is hitting as straight into the target butt as you can. Pay attention to arrow flight and get it looking as straight as possible.

Ususally, when done with this process, my bareshafts hit very near my field tips at 20 yards, and my groups are as tight as I can get them.

Arthur P

Not drastic at all, C903. And yes, the plain truth is pretty encompassing.

In paper tuning, when exactly do you fine tune your tiller? GROUP SIZE? Consistency? You don' t. You tune to punch a certain kind of hole in a piece of paper. And when you' re done, you have a bow that' s tuned specifically to shoot an arrow and punch a certain kind of hole in a piece of paper. Unless you' re very lucky, it' s not tuned to shoot an arrow and actually hit what you' re shooting at with any degree of accuracy and consistency.

I' m not saying paper tuning isn' t a decent enough tool. But punching those stupid bulletholes in a piece of paper does NOT guarantee a perfect bow tune. A bullethole is an intermediate step, not the end product. In fact, after you go through a fine tuning regimen like Straightarrow described and when you do get a perfect tune on your bow, your pretty little bulletholes are likely to be gone.

Since it' s worked fine for me since long before Chuck Adams came along and made this big splash about paper tuning, I' ll stick to bareshafting and only use paper tuning when I' m feeling that masochistic urge. If you' re afraid of it, then stick to your paper. You know, I can get a bareshaft to fly true to 40 yards, but I still don' t call that a perfect tune.

BOWFANATIC

Straightarrow

I' m glad you like to type! That is exactly what I do when tuning my bows.
Personally , I think that tuning process should be pinned to the top of the forum for everyone to see for the rest of the season. Did you learn that process from Bernie P.?

Straightarrow

Bowfanatic,

Gee, if I had known, I would have waited to post after you - I could have saved some of those keystrokes.


I learned this exact process from reading posts about tuning on this forum over the past couple years, trying the stuff and then piecing together the parts that worked best for me. I found the tuning process very logical and it worked. The bareshaft tuning portion came as a result of not wanting to switch to mechanical broadheads. With this method, I can shoot fixed blade broadheads and never worry about their flight.

As an added note: when I get done with this process, the bow will sometimes shoot a bullet hole, but usually it doesn' t. Most of the time, there is a slight tear, but that tear is always less than 1/2" . It really depends on the shooter and the kind of torque they apply when shooting.