Originally Posted by
bronko22000
No Mercy, without arguing the issue, after reading his post again I would have to say that he probably has clearance issues. And he may have even had them from the onset using feathers. Most of us on here know that feathers are far more forgiving with fletching contact than are vanes. And most of us also know that out of a properly tuned bow bare shafts, vanes, feathers or whatever should all hit very close to same POI. But we don't know what experience this person has.
As for the powder test. I don't like putting powder on my riser. Instead I borrow my one of my wife's brightest lipsticks and coat the edge of the vanes. At the shot the lipstick will mark where it makes contact (rest or riser) and the vane will usually be wiped clean.
Don't take my previous post incorrectly to mean that I don't believe he has clearance issues. My post was meant to point out, as it states, that it's not worth talking about, it would have been faster to do the test than to type his original post. Do the test, figure out whether you're making contact or not, and there's no more speculation about whether feathers or vanes fly differently. Whether a guy uses powder, lipstick, dry erase marker, or whatever as the witness substrate, the fact remains - it's quick, easy, FREE, and conclusive.
Comparatively speaking: It's not like a conversation whether your arrows are underspined or not, where it might cost you $100 to try a new shaft to eliminate stiffness as a variable. Or a conversation about whether your timing is out of whack and you need a certain level of expertise (and equipment) to press the bow and balance cables, and whether you believe your local shop HAS that expertise to be able to remedy the situation, rather than making it worse.
It's kinda like saying my car won't start... I suppose it could be a dead battery, or a bad starter relay, or water in my distributor cap, bad plug wires or plugs, or something wrong with the fuel management computer, he11, she could have seized entirely for one reason or another, or maybe a bird built a nest in my air intake...
But step number one should be to verify that there's gas in the tank.
If he does the test and finds out there is no contact, then obviously there's something else afoot. As I mentioned in my original response, if that's the case, I'd start looking at my tuning practice from square one. Again, I'd ask the question, where did his bareshafts strike relative to his feather fletched arrows? Where do they strike relative to his vane fletched arrows?