Bridge Woods Field Archery Club

Arrow Tuning

Bare Shaft Tuning

To carry out bare shaft tuning, you need to shoot consistently: concentrate on making good shots rather than hitting a specific target while you are tuning. Firstly fix a temporary nocking point on your string within the range stated above, using dental floss or sticky tape. Then use good straight fletched arrows, plus one from which you have removed the fletchings (& cleaned any glue/rough area where they were situated). Pin an aiming mark centrally on a target without a face (a ‘calling card’ is ideal), stand about 10/15yards back, and shoot for a while with the fletched arrows to ‘settle in’ and make sure you are grouping your arrows. Do not worry if your arrows land to the left or right of the mark. (If you do not usually use a sight, you might find it best while tuning to use a temporary sight, e.g. foam draught excluder and a large headed dress-making pin). You are then ready to tune, so do not alter your sighting from then on during tuning. As you only have a ‘makeshift’ nocking point, remember to keep checking it throughout the process to ensure it does not accidentally move. Firstly, shoot one fletched arrow, and then the bare, and see where the bare lands compared to the fletched. If it is hitting high or low, it is adjusted by changing the nocking point: if the bare arrow hits consistently higher than the fletched, then raise the nocking point; if the bare arrow hits lower, then lower the nocking point. Make any necessary adjustments by 1/8 increments to start with, ‘fine tuning’ by 1/16" increments if necessary, with the objective of setting your nocking point so that the bare arrow consistently hits the target at the same height as the fletched. If you find that the bare arrow consistently hits high of the fletched, then you are probably not getting good arrow clearance, i.e. some part of the arrow is catching the bow or arrow rest as it leaves the bow (you can check this with a thin layer of spray on talcum powder). Raising the bracing height of the bow may give better arrow clearance. If not, and it is catching the arrow rest, try a different make of rest.

If you make any changes to your archery equipment (arrows, fletchings, string, bracing height etc) you should always do the bare shaft test to check nocking point, so you may wish to leave that one arrow permanently bare.

Walk Back Tuning

More Advanced Tuning: (‘Walk Back Tuning’)(NB please read this, even if you think most of it is not applicable to your chosen shooting style: it may nevertheless give some hints or solve some mysteries!). You may then wish to look at if the bare arrow was hitting left or right of the fletched. This indicates if your arrows are ‘stiff’ or ‘soft’  (sometimes referred to as ‘weak’) for your bow set-up. NB the ‘perfect match’ may not be achievable: arrow manufacturers only make arrows in certain stiffness (‘spine’) ratings, (wooden arrows especially!), and it also depends what ‘class’ of bow you wish to shoot: a ‘pressure’ or ‘plunger’ button can help ‘fine-tune’, Under NFAS rules a pressure button is considered part of the rest, since the arrow is in contact with it when on the rest. Therefore if the bow has been drilled to take a pressure button one may be used for any recurve shooting style i.e. Barebow, Hunting Tackle, Freestyle etc . For A Right Handed Archer (reverse for left handed): If the bare arrow hits left of the fletched, the shaft is probably too stiff, and if it hits right of the fletched, the shaft is probably too weak: a good way of testing this is with
‘Walk Back Tuning’. You need a minimum of 6 identical good straight fletched arrows. To get a worthwhile result you need to be shooting consistently: i.e. your technique should be consistent, and your arrow groups reasonably ‘tight’ – try and get good groups at distances up to 40 yards. Start by shooting an arrow at a (large) boss from 10 yards. Adjust your sight so you are hitting centrally near the top of the target. Then, always sighting on the same point without altering your sight, move back in a straight line roughly 5 yards at a time, shooting at least one arrow at each distance (more is useful if you have enough arrows!) up to 35 or 40 yards. Ignore bad shots. Your arrows will form a pattern down the target: see below. The ‘ideal’ (i.e. a “perfectly” matched bow and arrows) is a straight line down the target (line C).  A line going left (B) means the arrows are too stiff, and one to the right (D) means they are too weak. To rectify, if you have a button weaken the spring if the arrows go left, and tighten it if the arrows go right (NB count the turns you make on the grub screw to keep track of any adjustments, and enable fine tuning).  If you do not have a button, you can still adjust your equipment, but not so easily, so you must decide if the deviation from ‘straight’ is sufficient to need to alter your equipment. Different spine arrows are an expensive option; other alternatives include shortening arrows, (don’t do it unless you are sure!), lengthening them (some adjustment is possible with alloy arrows), different piles, sanding down wooden arrows, or even making your own from ‘virgin wood’ (books are available, but you need dedication!) (NB those assembling wooden arrows from purchased machined shafts, may find it worth trying to match diameter, weight and density of shafts before assembly, in order to get sets of arrows as similar as possible: arrows that are not matched will not fly the same).
Finally, two other patterns may be visible on the boss: a curve left (A), or a curve right (E). The left curve means the arrow is too far left (wind in the button, or cut away the arrow rest/change to a different design); the right curve means the arrow is too far right (wind out the button, or pack out/change the arrow rest).

Site updated by Alan White on 16/2/08