Curious what spine wood arrows y’all use. I am having a little tuning issue.

My draw is 30” my bow is a 64” bear takedown roughly 47lbs at my draw. B-50 string.

shafts are Douglas fir from sure wood 70/75 , 30” BOP ,125gr tip

Bare shaft this tend to favor a weak reading. Obviously I need a 31” to BOP for broadheads so I am guessing I am going to have to step up to 75/80 spine

Just seems like a lot of spine for the set up.

this shows both wood and alum.

First off quit bare shafting !!! And yes that is a pretty stiff shaft for that setup. 60/64 cut to 30" BOP should be to go. And 65/69 for 31"

Bob

if bow is cut to center are past +5 pounds of bow wt.

Would appear they are way too stiff.

Bobs on the money. I would said 2 lbs lighter but he does this for a living.You should be having tune issues with as stiff a shaft as ur using.

try 150 gr. are more up front and see what it does

Bob

Curious why I shouldn’t bare shaft tune wood arrows?

Boker: Essentially its a waste of time. You can purchase any spine wooden shafts you desire. By using a simple formula, you can choose the correct spine for any bow you want.

Bob

bigdog21, thanks for posting chart. I saved it to photos. Easier than trying to explain. This subject comes up every once in awhile on other sites as well. I have used this formula since the 1980’s when I got my first Black Widow.

“ Curious why I shouldn’t bare shaft tune wood arrows?”

It just depends how far you’re willing to take it. If you do it just enough to convince yourself that you really need to stay within one specific bracket & point weight for a given bow, you have probably gone as far as makes any sense.

It doesn’t make sense to tune down to a single pound (or less) of spine when they are sold in #5 brackets. If you are lucky, you will find a supplier who will reduce that window by a fair amount, but there’s a limit to what you can reasonably ask of them.

If you’re good enough that a couple pounds of spine is going to be the primary variable in your groupings, then you probably oughtta use Aluminum.

The deflection of a 60lb. shaft is.431, the deflection of a 64lb. shaft is .431. A difference of .026". The person who can shoot the difference in those has yet to be born.

However as with many things if you convince yourself it matters it will.

That should say 64lb. is .405.

I completely understand that bare shaft tuning isn’t a perfect Science. I know that slight variations in my release etc produce different results as well

However I have been able to achieve good bare shaft flight from carbons and aluminum shafts. I don’t expect,nor can I shoot bullet holes with bare shafts due to the variations mentioned above

But in my mind if a bare shaft flys somewhat true , the feathers will only have to correct my flaws.

I like spine charts , spine calculators etc and use them but in my experience arrow spine can’t be solely base on them or at least it hadn’t worked that way for me. Probably due to my imperfections as a shooter.

Ken beck has a great video on bare shafts tuning on YouTube.

I am new to wood shafts but plan to shoot them more and maybe completely switch over at some point.

I don't try to bareshaft tune wooden arrows. For one thing it breaks too many shafts. The second thing is that very few archers are able to shoot consistently enough to get meaningful results for their aiming method. Olympic style archers with bowsights and clickers may, but few of the rest of us. Spend your energy on other aspects of tuning and shot execution. We only have so many IQs; don't waste any. - lbg

Tuning arrows can be done using various methods. Doesn't matter if it is bare shaft tuning, or tuning finished arrows.

The popularity tuning by arrow length and so on became more popular with the introduction of carbon. Just as Bob and others have stated many times. Very researchers any more are fluent in tuning using changes to the bow, but contrary to what many would lead us to believe the end product is the same.

Many times too much time is spent on things that don't provide the greatest reward. And tuning can be one of those things. If the arrow flies tried with fetching on it, how it got to that point makes absolutely no difference. And whether it was done bareshafting or any other way makes no difference. Both finished arrows will have the same potential for accuracy as well as the same potential for lethality.

Like longbowguy said, spend time working on shot execution, learning to get broadheads shaving sharp (which will effectively increase the potential lethality) or things of that nature.

“ For one thing it breaks too many shafts. ”

JMO, if you are having that particular problem, it just means that 1) that you have a very significant Spine imbalance and 2) you are standing too far away from your target.

A significantly over/under spined arrow does not come off of your bow flying sideways. It takes time for that tail left or right to develop. The entire “trick“ of it is, if you are relatively uncertain about what you’ve got, you simply take your first shot from 5 yards or less, so that whatever issue you have doesn’t have time to develop into a shaft-busting proposition.

If the spine is way off, you just saved yourself a few bucks. If this spine is actually pretty close, well, that’s one shot you’ll never get back. It’s not going to kill you.

FWIW, I take the same approach with aluminum, because just one time, a full length 2117 was much weaker than I had anticipated, and I bent a brand new shaft on the very first shot. Didn’t need to do THAT twice.

And just sayin’.....

I have been able to bare-shaft wood arrows (a test kit of Wapiti tapered cedars) out to at least 50 feet (at which point I ran out of yard). One of them was so well- tuned that I robin-hooded it at that distance and the hit was good enough to split the nock AND the shaft for a couple of inches. 100% skill, honest. Point is, all of my arrows were grouping - aluminum, carbon, AND wood.

So I’m a firm believer that it can be done, even by me, but the objective is to get close enough (with the length & point weight that you want) to know what to order next time. If you need it to exact, I think wood is the option of last resort.

And one other thought which just occurred to me…

Bob and Frank (fdp)were observing that it didn’t used to be the case that people would painstakingly match their arrows to their bow, but rather simply adjust the bow a little bit to make sure that it shot the arrows that they had in hand. Strike plate, brace height; maybe nudge the nocking point.

Though I would think that building out your strike plate might be one of those things that you really only have to do once.

And with wood, that makes perfect sense. If you have such well-matched shafts that it makes a difference, then maybe you DO want to adjust by a twist or three to your string if this dozen is all closer to one end of the bracket and the last bunch were closer to the other.

So.....

With man-made materials, you can tune your bow to an arrow that is exactly the weight and length that you want, or you can tune your bow to its most quiet and best-behaving brace height and then find the arrow it likes.

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