ORIGINAL: Paul L Mohr
When bare shaft tuning, especially with a release (it's really meant for finger shooters) have no concern with how the arrow is in the target. Most targets do not have a consistant enough medium to judge it anyway. The only I concern myself with is WHERE the arrow impacts, not how it impacts. I'm not overly concerned with how it flies either, as long is it hits the mark. An arrow with no fletchings has a different dynamic than one with does, don't expect them to react the same way.
When it comes off wrong you will know it, it will be waaay to one side or tail high when it is in the air. If you have decent follow through you will be able to see it whip when it comes out of bow.
I also like to take a fletched arrow and just shave the fin part off the fletching leaving the base and the glue. This lets me keep most or nearly all of the weight and FOC depending on the type of fletchings you use.
Sounds like your good to go to me.
Paul
Paul, I was reading up a little on bareshaft tuning, and have heard two sides (opinions) on the subject matter. One, like you, states it's not entirely necessary for release shooters, while the others say it is a great way to check for spine. I noticed while reading through the easton guide, the bareshaft tuning is noted only for release shooters and seems to pertain to nock point and rest adjustments. Can these nock point/rest adjustments be done with group/walkback tuning with a compound then instead of bareshaft? Or is there another way? I get the feeling some archers believe bareshaft gives the archer PRECISE tuning capabilities that walk-back/group/french tuning cannot. Thoughts?