Sorry guys that I've been away for quite a while. Band and work schedule has been through the roof the past 3-4 months (and just got back from a week of playing in Sturgis ..... )

Some may remember that I finally got a nice spine tester completed earlier in the year: http://forum.hunting.net/asppg/tm.asp?m=979296&mpage=1&key=spine%2Ctester

Some people had asked me to check back with spine values as I get shafts in for fletching up arrows. Well I'm making up some new hunting arrows for a friend and myself and thought I'd report what I found this week.

My friend wanted to stick with all-carbon arrows and bought a dozen of the Easton C2 Carbon Epic 400's. I prefer ACC's and bought a dozen of the 3-49's for this upcoming elk and deer season.

I put all the raw shafts on my spine tester, and also on my grain scale. As shafts are rotated on the spine tester, you'll see a bit of wobble on the indicator dial from your hand pressure while turing the shaft, depending on how "dead on" you are over the support bearing. You can get a good average of spine deflection once you play with it a bit- you get fairly consistent in you spinning pretty quickly. It's not that hard to notice when a shaft comes along that has an obvious spine wobble.

First the C2's. They advertise 2.0grains across a dozen. Following weights are RAW shafts with NO nocks in them.

Spine: Weight:
.402 262.0
.401 261.8
.408 258.6
.390 259.6
.407 258.6
.396 259.5
.388 260.7
.397 260.1
.388 261.2
.390 260.1
.403 261.2
.400 262.7

Spine span of .020" and a weight span of 4.1grains. One shaft had a noticeable spine wobble of over .007" as it was turned with the weight on it. Doesn't make their advertised spec of 2.0 grains across the dozen. I'll leave it up to my friend if he wants to return them or not.

No onto my ACC's.

They advertise 0.5 grains across a dozen- that's a tough spec to meet and I'm not sure if I've ever seen a dozen from ANY manufacturer meet that spec from the factory without some personalized "hand-sorting".... Following weights are shafts with ACC nock inserts installed from the factory.

Spine: Weight:
.375 291.0
.374 291.4
.373 290.9
.376 291.1
.373 291.1
.371 291.6
.373 291.6
.371 291.8
.374 291.2
.375 290.9
.372 291.5
.376 291.0

Spine span of .005" (pretty nice!) and a weight span of 0.9 grains (not bad...) This kind of shows why the ACC's are consistently such an accurate arrow. Even though this batch didn't quite meet its spec of 0.5 grains for the dozen, it's not far off. I did notice one shaft had a wobble of almost .005" in spine as I rotated it on the tester. That shaft is getting weeded out immediately....

I love my ACC's year after year......

P.S. Is Rangeball still around here? Did he ever finally cave in and buy a hanging bow scale? I thought I'd guilt him into it eventually.