Tune Up Your Bow

A bow is like a truck.  All trucks need to have an oil change, tune up, and tires rotated every now and again.  If you do these things, chances are your truck will work fine. There are many people out there that want to soup up there trucks.  They want the truck to go faster or perform better.  

Bows are the same. You can tune it up and change the strings as needed. This will give you a good shooting bow for hunting or target shooting. You can also do things to your bow to make it shoot faster and more accurate.  This is a massive subject and can not be covered in one article.  We are going to write a couple of articles about tuning up you bow.

The first subject that we will cover is center shot.  A bow has to shoot an arrow straight.  This is the only way that you will get an accurate shot with a broadhead. There are many tools that you can us to help you get the arrow shooting straight out of the bow.  Most of these tools will get you close but there is no way to tell until you shot the bow.

To see how the arrow is flying you have to have a way tracking the flight of the arrow. The best way to do this is to paper tune your bow.  To paper tune an arrow you have to see how it flies through a piece of paper. An 8x10 piece of paper held in the flight of the arrow will do a good job.  They way it tears the paper will tell you how the arrow is flying.

The easiest way to do this is to get a box and cut a hole in the bottom of it.  Then tape the paper over the hole.  I use a piece of copy paper for this part.  Place the box in front of the target so the arrow can pass though the paper and box before it hits the target.

The archer will stand 4 feet in front of the box and shoot through the paper.  The rip in the paper will tell how the arrow is flying.  The photo below will tell you how to correct any problems.

To correct vertical flutter (C), move your nocking point down or your arrow rest up.

To correct vertical flutter (D), move your nocking point up or your arrow rest down.

To correct fletch left (E), move your arrow rest away from bow.

To correct fletch right (F), move your arrow rest toward the sight window.

This can be a little hard at first.  There are some things that you need to know.  You will have a very difficult time paper tuning your bow if your arrow spine is not correct.  You also have to take your time.  This is something that can not be rushed. 

If you start to tune your bow and things get worse, move your rest back to where you started. Make one move at a time.  Do not try to correct for more them one problem at a time.  Once you have done this with field points, next this should be done with broad heads.   Sometimes the broadhead will plane a little differently.  You may have to try different configurations of the way the blades and fletching line up to get a good tear.

This can sound daunting at first, but once you do it a couple times it becomes easier.  Good luck and happy shooting.

Sean