ORIGINAL: brucelanthier
Sure, you can always get the bad arrow but he showed me a way while paper tuning that I can also do a decent check of the spine (rotate the nock). So, what I do now is run my arrows through paper and see if the tear changes while I rotate the nock 120 degrees.
Just a side note to what you mentioned. There are not just three orientations for a nock on a normal three-fletch arrow. There are
six. Each fletch position can have the nock rotated 180 degrees, that means two nock orientations at each fletch position. And that CAN make a difference.
Very interesting shooting bareshafts out of a Hooter Shooter and indexing nock orientations. On some shafts as you turn the nock you'll see a circular imact pattern form.