Compound Bow Arrow Rests and X10 arrows

There was a time when Clint Freeman in Australia was using a fall away rest (Benardini?) with his X10s but I understand that he moved away from drop aways and is using a spring steel launcher now(??).

I don't know what other compound archers are doing but I have noticed with the X 10 arrow in particular, that because of the very small diameter of the rear end of the shaft, there is very little room between fletchings (and I use tiny fletchings), certainly nowehere near enough to obtain vane clearance over spring steel launcher arm.

I noticed just yesterday how sensitive the arrow can be to minor misalignments in the nock position and how much lateral movement can occur at 90 metres in particular, if there is any sort of one sided vane contact. It seems to me that if both vanes contact the launcher equally, no great harm is done.

This is one of the reasons why I was drawn to drop aways for X10s in the first place but went back to the spring blade when other problems with the drop aways arose.

So would someone be able to tell me what the latest thinking on this matter is please? In particular whether the drop away IS the preferred option or, if the spring blade, then how are issues of vane contact resolved?

I'm having a pretty frustrating time wrestling with this problem at the moment so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Also, I'd like to know people's views about using Spin Wings or Kurly Vanes on X10s and whether there are even more problems with vane contract with these particular vanes.

Many thanks in advance for assitance.

This is just my thinking, not current expert thinking. If the arrow is off the rest after two or so inches of flight, then the rest is unnecessary beyond that point.
There is one rest that drops away just before the fletchings pass. The shaft slides along the rest until then. Is that contact with the rest, control or interference? I suppose it depends on things that I can only guess at. If the arrow does not need that control, then it is better off without it.
I imagine there is a speed that the arrow needs to reach before it is self supporting.( if the rest dropped too soon, the arrow would drop with it)
I think video evidence shows the first bend in the arrow to be upward. That would take the arrow away from the rest. Some people advocate the paper test results should be a tail up tear, that is nocking point slightly high, which also gives a lift off the rest effect.
On my own drop away rest, I can delay the drop to the point where it is too late.There is contact with the fletchings and there is contact with the shaft just before that. A kind of bounce effect.
Adjusting the timing at the early end of things is not so critical, it would seem.( remember though, I am not a good enough shot to make small differences show). What I think happens is this, if the rest is set to drop after(let us say 2") the arrow has enough speed to support itself and continue without falling.
Adjust to 4" and the results look the same. My guess is that the shaft has already bent upwards and away from the rest so contact was probably lost after 2" or similar. Further delays make no differences, that I can see,until the rest starts to strike the shaft near the fletchings.
I think the easiest way to get vane clearance is to raise the nocking point just enough, I think that you would rather find a different way round that problem, and so would I. It is just the way my mind works and it is one of my hobbies.:cheerful:

The fletchings should be clearing any type of rest by that point. Drop aways are just too liable to go wrong when you least need it to happen. Use a spring steel rest, from your own admission in a previous post you say the blade is there to absorb vertical motion in the arrow so go with one.

I dont worry about all this stuff, iI just use what works and what is reliable, stuff i can just forget about and im honest with myself. If the arrow ends up where my dot was then the shot went off, is nothing wrong with the bow. Its just comes down to having your dot in the right place.

Geoff and Fox. Thanks for your thoughts. I wouldn't have raised this issue because in general I find the spring blade launcher really reliable and tend to use it exclusiverly these days.

However, it was the X10s that caused me concern because I was definitely getting uneven vane contact and this really shows at 90m.

I don't really understand how raising the nocking point can cause the vanes to clear the rest. I would have thought this would drive the vanes down into the blade ??? I don't understand rest operations well enough to get my head around some of these things.

I mentioned to Geoff in a PM that I have just bought a Montana Trap Door inertial drop away and it seems to be working well at present. I'll be doing extensive trials with it at the longer ranges to see how it holds up with a lot of shooting. If it keeps working well, I'll stick with it for a tournament and see how things work out.ptimist: ray:

I'm interested to see what concensus (if any! :cheerful: ) this thread brings.

I shot with a Trap Door rest for about a year, but I changed to a Spigarelli Top Rest in June. The Trap Door was great in the beginning but I was starting to find it a bit inconsistent in the timing of its drop (was affecting my vertical grouping a bit) but worse was that it developed some horizontal play in the shaft (the rest could move a millimeter or so left/right) which was *badly* affecting my horizontal grouping :thumbsdow. I was getting noticably "oval shaped" groups, and switching to the Spigarelli immeditately gave me tighter (from edge of blue/red at 100 yards to inner red/gold) and circular groups, with a corresponding increase in scores :cheerful:. Also, the trap door can be a pain in the :muted: to fit to some Hoyt Tec risers (2004 and 2006 UltraTec's in my case) because the arrow rest sits so far inside the bow it gets very close to the bridge part of the riser (took the paint off it on my bow).

However, I don't particularly like having a cord attached to my cables, or the number of screws there are to work loose on the Spigarelli, so I'm tempted to try a simpler rest...

Chryd

I suppose that the issue you raised with the Trap Door are the ones that are causing me some apprehension. If either of these symtoms appear, I'll drop it like a hot cake. I just hope that it stays "well" because I too hate cords etc attached to my cables.:sigh:

Timujin, Raising the nocking point causes the arrow to try to rotate, so the nock tries to go over the top of the pile. It doesn't get that far because the shaft does act as a straightener and eventually pulls the back end down again. In the time it takes to do that, the tail has cleared the rest.
Lowering the nocking point causes the nock to try to get under the pile and that would smash into the rest before it cleared the bow.
To see this happening, hold a pencil at the back and throw it like a dart. Once with the tail lower than the point and again with the tail higher. See how the high tail rotates so the tail lifts even more and the other starts tail low and gets lower.
Chryd, one of the problems with inertia rests these days is the way the manufacturers try to make the mechanisms smaller so they can be hidden? or kept away from the weather. One of the earliest ones, the Barner rest was all exposed and could be robust. It was crude and difficult to adjust in small increments. Also, compounds are so steady and so quick that the inertia effect is lessened and by the time some drop, it is too late. Because they have to be set up so sensitively, it makes them erratic if there are any slight changes.
The ShurDrop has very few parts. It is or can be robust. I think it is driven by arrow /rest friction which may cause flight problems. I'm about to start stage two of my tweaking. If it can be made to work well, it will be both simple and effective.

I'm certainly no expert, but I think that Geoff has struck the nail on the head, so to speak.

I just viewed two high speed vids; one with a slightly low nocking point, and one high. These were with drop-aways with what looked like spring steel launchers, but the arrow bends up and down as usual with the rest blade not seeming to affect it much even during the contact phase. I believe this is where spring steel launchers have their inherent advantage regardless of rest type.

What's particularly noticeable is that the tail end of the arrow basically does not follow the pile (the arrow is already bobbing up and down and the pile is moving up and down) because it stays on the string the longest. What happens is that if the nock point is slightly higher, the rear end of the arrow stays high throughout the time it's being launched regardless of compound 'paradox'. Set a slightly higher nocking point and the rear end of the arrow should lift off the launcher high enough that whatever slight vane contact there is should not be a problem.

I personally don't think that setting the nocking point really high (as in more than 2-3mm) would solve the problem as other issues come into play...so the balance lies in choosing the right spring steel launcher stiffness coupled with a 2-3mm high nocking point. Also, the angle of the launcher plays a part it seems. I've heard recommended starting points between 30-35 degrees. Just my thoughts...

CHEERS!

Thanks Christopher

I wish I could see some slo mo videos of arrows travelling over compound bow rests. I might learn a bit about what is really going on.

I'll take your and Geoff's advice and raise my nocking point some but I'm not going up 10mm as some people recommend.

I believe Marcus discussed this issue once and he too was having trouble even with spring rests trying to tune the X10 arrow and at that stage was thinking of going back to Triples because of the problems he was having. I think that was the gist of it but I can't be certain.

I'm just not certain that the X10 ever works too well over a normal type rest - the nock end is too tiny.

I just hope my Montana keeps working as it seems to solve all problems.

I believe Marcus discussed this issue once and he too was having trouble even with spring rests trying to tune the X10 arrow and at that stage was thinking of going back to Triples because of the problems he was having. I think that was the gist of it but I can't be certain.

Click to expand...

Yep, pretty much.
Ended up giving up and changing to Navigators.
I found that the nock travel played a far bigger part in clearence than the blade width did
Bad flight due to contact was not the issue, rather in 2 weeks I twice dropped an arrow into the blue at 70m because a vane fell off. As I was in the middle of a very cut throat league at the time this hurt me alot.
The contact was causing the odd vane to fall off in mid flight. It was not affecting impact point as I was shooting fine.
In the end I decided to change to Navs and have not looked back.
I am also starting to suspect that cutting 2-3" off the back of an X10 for compound is wise.
My coach used X10's with a spring steel launcher just fine. No contact. However his bow has a much different nock travel to mine.
Both my wife, coach and main student all shoot X10's over standard rests no trouble. All three have recently shot scores equal to or near (1-2 points) current world records. So X10's will work just fine off a standard rest.

My view is, try the X10s. If they fly good, use them. If not use Navs or FMJ's. Changing to a drop away is not as good an option.

Thanks for that Marcus. Your experience with these arrows is invaluable and it is interesting to read that X10s seem to perform OK out of a standard rest - thankfully I still have a couple of those lying around.

I'll persist a while longer with the X10s and see what happens. Interesting comment about taking 2 to 3 inches off the back of the shaft. I thought that was verboten by Easton?

Easton don't recommend it because they will not tell you what the spine change will be. It starts getting into the very complicated area of setup which they would rather most people not mess with, or mess with at your own peril.

The X10's will work from a spring steel rest. Clint, Cousins, Dudley, Park etc all use that setup and get excellent results.

Again, my thanks for that Marcus.

It looks like the safest thing to do is to revert to my spring steel rest and stick with that. My mind feels more at ease about it now. :cheerful: