Tuning a 21" Hoyt Excel

nbuuifx

Member
My daughter is shooting fairly well at the moment. She has been shooting for 2 years now.

She shoots a Hoyt Excel 21" which makes a 62" bow. She has bamboom limbs at the moment. She shoots about 12lbs otf.

Technique is good for her age and she has had lots of coaching. Posture has room for improvement but not terrible.

We are looking at increasing the draw weight slightly in the coming months.

She shoots 1500 ACC arrows.

She uses a Hoyt plastic rest and a pressure button.

The problem that she is having is that she seems to be getting some arrow to riser contact. It makes an audible sound but hasn't been enough to wear the paint away on the riser. I put powder on tonight and you can see a mark appears. The mark is directly behind the rest in line with the shaft and is right on the edge.

I've checked the centre shot is correct which it looks to be. I've tried softening and stiffening the pressure button to no avail. Is there anything else which can be done?
 

AndyS

Supporter
Supporter
If this is the same daughter who had a 20" draw length back in April, then the first thing that strikes me is that 1.500 ACC are maybe way too stiff - which wouldn't help. The current Easton chart seems to have those in group Y4 (16-20 lbs @ 27", 20-24lbs @26" etc)
12lbs @ 20" is off the Easton chart both on OTF and draw length, so would suggest that you ideally need something weaker than Y1, and Y1 lists spines of 2.000 - 2.500. Whilst the chart isn't gospel, it's usually somewhere close, and it seems to show that even if she doubled her OTF to 24lbs, the 1500 ACCs would still be too stiff :(
If they're that far out you've no hope of adjusting on the button, that only really fine tunes what is already close.
Have you tried bare shafts to see how they fly - though if they're stiff enough to cause riser contact that would confuse things as they bounce off the riser!

It might be worth trying a couple of weaker arrows to see how they behave, 1214s maybe?

Does anyone at your club have a high fps camera or phone, then you might be able to see what's going on? we've had someone at our club recently ripping chunks out of their upper hen fletching on the arrow rest - everything looked reasonable - center-shot etc, and we couldn't really figure out what the problem was, but some high fps captures proved that the tail of the arrow didn't even start to flick away from the riser until the fletchings were passing the rest/button - way too late!
 

nbuuifx

Member
Yes, same daughter!

The 1500 spine ACC arrows were the weakest spine we could get. She had some Easton jazz arrows before which her brother now uses but her scores improved noticeably when she changed to the ACC arrows. We have got a bare shaft. She hasn't shot it for a while but if I remember correctly it was within her group.
 

AndyS

Supporter
Supporter
If she's getting contact with the riser now, did she when you tried the bare shaft? I've no direct experience of clearance issues beyond fletching damage, but I'd imagine that if the arrows are making contact then you probably can't really tell a lot because the riser's interfering with where the shafts are trying to go.

If the jazz are still long enough for her to use, and are significantly weaker that the ACCs, then it might be worth trying them just as a diagnostic to see if it makes a difference to the contact issue. If the contact reduces or disappears then you'd have a pretty good indicator that being overspined is causing the contact - if nothing changes then it would suggest something else needs attention, although I'm not sure what that might be if the centre-shot is ok.
 

nbuuifx

Member
Thanks for the reply. You are right that really the ACC arrows are way too stiff, it just gets to a point where there isn't really anything that fits well. I've just been looking at the 1214 arrows. They look to take the Easton nock straight in like the ACC arrows do, do they take the same points too?

If so the tribute shafts are only a couple of quid each and I have spare points, nocks and fletchings so could make up half a dozen for not much money.

The old Easton jazz arrows were the next spine up but never flew as well and she really struggled to hit 30 yards or 30m with them (furthest she ever shoots). With the ACC arrows she can hit 30 although the grouping is wide.
 

AndyS

Supporter
Supporter
I don't think so :(

I've found a note in the Easton catalogue that says "A/C/C -00 sizes use the same size core tube as A/C/E shafts and may use all A/C/E points, inserts, and nocks"
- I've dug up what I think is a 1214 Jazz from the club kit (it's certainly got a G nock directly into the shaft), and an ACE point won't fit -I guess there's some give in the little plastic lugs on the g-nock, but not a lot in the steel of a point. The note from the catalogue suggests that the ACE should be the same size as the ACC point in your 1500s, so I think your ACC points might be too large for the 1214.

I'm assuming the old Jazz arrows the next spine up from the 1214s, ie 1413s, and not a spine up from the ACCs.
Does your club maybe have some 1214s in beginners kit that you could borrow to try?
 

Bowmania

New member
I have an Excel I use for coaching. In general, I say that you can only tune as well as you can shoot. Sounds like you have a nice young archer at 12 years old. Without seeing her shoot I'd say let her shoot with a little clearance issue. But maybe she shoots much better than most 12 year olds. In that case learn www.acsbows.com/bowtuning.html click on 'download printable version'.
 

nbuuifx

Member
The jazz arrows were 1413. They are a tad too short now for her to use but I got her to carefully try a few. Same contact but they fly worse.
Need to start to slowly increase the poundage now as the current limbs are far too light for her. I feel like the poundage is perhaps limiting the shooting as much as anything else. Her draw length has shot up since April. She has gone from around 20" to about 22.5" although the extra 2 and a half inches hasn't actually added that much draw weight onto the fingers according to the bow scales.
 

nbuuifx

Member
Had a bit of luck. I've changed the limbs from 14lb limbs which were currently giving 12.5lbs otf, to 20lb limbs which are currently set to 15.5lbs otf and the contact seems to have gone. It is early days as she only did a few ends but the contact had gone and her grouping seemed better.
 
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