JOE PA

I recently made a spine meter to get a little more info on arrows this year. With all the posts lately about how some guys think it is a complete waste of money to buy anything but the cheap .006 carbons, I bought some lower grade carbons to check, and compare them to the ACCs I had. I got 6 Carbon Wolverines at Wal-Mart. (Nothing says quality like a white bar code painted on your arrows!) I also picked up some Carbon Tech Cheetahs in Cabelas Bargain Cave. The Wolverines aren't too bad for spine around the shaft, most individual arrows varied by .002 or less. Arrow to arrow variation was not so good though, with total variation in the 6 arrows of .025. The Cheetahs varied as much as .003 and as little as .0005 around the shaft, and shaft to shaft variation was .012. In addition, only one of my Wolverines spins as nice as my ACCs, although most of them were pretty good on one end and bad on the other. The Cheetahs are similar. One (of 12) had no wobble at all, 4 had only the slightest amount, but on both ends. The other 7 had significant wobble on one end, with the other end pretty straight. IME, if you have a wobble on the nock end, you usually will have an inconsistent arrow. That is exacly what you have a good chance to get from most shops, as they cut only the point end of the arrow shaft.[&:]

To offer a comparison, every single one of the 18 ACCs I have bought in the last 2 years have spun perfectly, at least to my eyes (which are also looking at the other arrows.) In terms of spine, they vary from .0005 to .001 around the shaft, and varied only .0015 from arrow to arrow for a dozen arrows. That is only a little more than 1/10 the variation in the Cheetahs, which were the better of the two cheap carbons. At this point, I think the best way for me to have saved money was to have not bothered to make the spine meter, or buy the cheap carbons, and just stick with the ACCs.

I guess the question that most will have is what is the acutal difference in shooting. I am not a human Hooter Shooter, so I'm not the best person to answer that. I haven't done enough shooting with the all carbons to say for sure, but from the shooting I've done so far, the Wolverines don't seem to shoot too badly with field points out to 30, maybe 40. With broadheads, I think they are less reliable past 20 than the ACCs. If I really wanted to use them, I would just number the arrows and shoot the ones that shot best. If I can find the time, I will experiment to see how much improvement can be had by cutting off the worst parts of the shafts, and aligning the cock fletch with the lowest measured deflection.

BGfisher

Good post JoePa. It just reinforces what I've thought for a long time. ACC's sure seem to consistently show that they are the class of carbons---within the price of practicality, that is. And the price may be high, but compared to what? Price the top arrows from each manufacturer and you'll not see a great difference. I personally have only ever had one ACC that would not group with others. I tried everything with this thing and the only thing that worked was when I put it through the arrow cutoff saw.