Bareshaft and Spine Selection

JohnKR

New member
Can any one give an educated guess (or prefarably know for sure) how far to the left, or right, will a bare shaft land in relation to a perfectly matched arrow, per spine difference, say at 20 yards?

John.
 

jerryRTD

Well-known member
I think some one posted a picture of the difference between a 600 red Line and a 690 redline some where.
 

Rik

Supporter
Supporter
Can any one give an educated guess (or prefarably know for sure) how far to the left, or right, will a bare shaft land in relation to a perfectly matched arrow, per spine difference, say at 20 yards?

John.
Won't it vary according to setup?
 

JohnKR

New member
Rik,
I don?t know, but I (perhaps mistakenly) thought that it would be a consistent measurement as long as each spine of arrow was shot from the same bow.
Are you saying that some set-ups will shoot a wider range of spines in tighter groups than other set-ups?
John.
 

Tarkwin

Prince Of Dorkness
Fonz Awardee
Ironman
American Shoot
it would proably be consistent if all other factors were identical. If the bow were set in a machine similar to those available for compounds, but there are too many variables with a human (or at least there are with me)

T.
 

bobsam

New member
Can any one give an educated guess (or prefarably know for sure) how far to the left, or right, will a bare shaft land in relation to a perfectly matched arrow, per spine difference, say at 20 yards?

sorry mate but the bare shaft is not for tuning, as such, but as a check once completed. the misconception comes from a rick mckinny interview many years ago when he said his bare shaft goes low left, that is personnel to him. once you have set and tuned your bow, shoot a bare shaft, remember were it goes and then it can be used for quick reference if you change something. hope this helps
 

geoffretired

Supporter
Supporter
John,I think this is a very useful question and the answers would be very helpful to many archers.
If you have the right arrows, no worries, but what if you have the wrong ones?
At 20y the bare shaft is X away from the fletched ones. Does X require one spine difference to sort out or two; or three???
My guess is that the worse the match, the bigger the distance between fletched and bare shaft.
I am going to stick my neck out and say that 3 to 4 inches would be a one spine difference. Bigger than that is more than one spine. I know that sounds basic and not really helpful but, what happens in real life archery?
I think most archers buy their arrows; then test them and have great results or a close match or rubbish match.
Close match will be good enough for many. One change of spine will get the close matches to be great matches for those who look for better.
Those with rubbish results will probably look at the charts again and find they have misread something.Or they may get advice and try a two spine change because their results look worse than the one spine difference.
Put another way; if your results later prove to be five spines wrong, I feel the," first time results", could be very difficult to read anyway.
 

geoffretired

Supporter
Supporter
Heehee, didn't notice that!!
However, it didn't get a result as far as I can see.
Is the question still valid and worth pursuing?
Perhaps, more for my own information; is the idea that one spine is worth about 3-4 inches a reasonable value?
 

buzz lite beer

Well-known member
I can give you an answer then Geoff, in my current circumstances as I'm inbetween setups using old and new arrows of differing spines though other dimentions (length/point weight) are constant.
My older 450 X10's bare shaft lands 1.5" further to the left at 20yards than my new set of 500 X10 (wich the bow is biased too in the set up to shoot with stakes) both variants of shaft give central impacts at this distance with fletched arrows.
 

geoffretired

Supporter
Supporter
Thanks for that, Buzz.
(wich the bow is biased too in the set up to shoot with stakes
I'm not entriely sure what this means, though. stakes???

So, 1.5" at 20y is not a problem. You wouldn't consider that to be a mismatch and NEED to change arrow spine, right?
3-4" would possibly be only one spine out and the next spine should be a good match.
Just to clarify, I am not trying to say best groups can only be shot with perfectly matched shafts. I am thinking of archers with arrow spine decisions to make. They are getting not so good results with current bare shaft comparisons and want to make a good choice next time.
 

Thorvald

Active member
In one way I think you don't answer the thread starters question. However we will never now, as it seems. But I read the question as: When bow and arrows are tuned in the best way, how far away from the fletched shafts, would the (same) unfletched shafts impact?

That's how I read it. And my answer to that would be that according to Easton, normally the best tune is when the bare shafts impact slightly low and slightly left of fletched shafts. "Slightly", I would interpret as max. 2". But you need to be quite good to make such tight groups that you can see that. I can't. But then I say just look at the center of the unfletched group versus the center of the fletched group and evaluate from that. If the groups aren't good, I forget it and try again. "Good enough" group would for me be within 4" (barebow).

#bobsam: Sorry, but I don't agree. Bare shaft tests is a good way to tune one's bow and arrows to match to each other.
 
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