What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

Correct nock to string fit:

I would consider proper nock to string fit to be a commonly overlooked or ignored tuning or troubleshooting consideration.

Arrow nocks that are too tight-fitting or too loose-fitting on string WILL cause grouping and accuracy problems, more than some know or believe. Incorrect nock fit WILL affect the vertical and horizontal flight/impact, but the problem is too commonly believed to be the result of other more popular causes.

As your string wears or you install a new string, especially if the string has more or less strands than what was previously on the bow, you need to check your nock fit and readjust the fit as required.

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

I'd say nock fit is definitely one of the most common things overlooked.

Running a close second is tiller. Smart shooters get their tiller properly set and let the poundage fall where it may. They know a bow that's maxed out is not necessarily going to shoot it's best or fastest. They also know a bow that is properly adjusted is going to be easier to tune, will stay in tune better, will be more comfortable to shoot and will give it's very best accuracy.

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

Absolutely! Especially with todays speed demons.

I carry a minimum of roughly 3 dozen nocks of various colors for my carbons in my bow case so I can replace one quick and easy anytime during practice. It also gives me satisfaction to pull one out when I see someone bust a nock at the range and fix them up in a hurry.
It isn't as quick and easy when I shoot my aluminums but I still check them and replace them often.

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

Thats why I like the magnock system.

The only unfortunate thing is they do not make them yet to fit my current arrows.
But as soon as they do I will be going back to the Magnocks.

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

1 Underspined
2 Not enough fletch
3 Improper draw length

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

Personally, I believe some people just can't believe they don't have a repeatable shot sequence. They give ya that old, "been shooting for 30 years" line. [:o] But nock fit is important.;)

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

So is there a proper procedure for checking nock fit? Or are you just going by the feel?

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

On the mechanical side I would say fletch contact is one of the biggest problems people have with tuning. Or just not having the rest set up correctly to begin with. I would say nock alignment is more overlooked than nock fit.

I however agree with nub all the way. I believe the biggest thing people over look is how well they shoot to begin with. Form and grip play a huge role in tuning a bow. If you can't grip the bow consistantly from shot to shot, how do you expect it to tune consistanly? Many people have the misconception that if they can't get thier arrows to group the bow must be out of tune. It can't be them! Well I don't mean to whiz in your breakfast cereal, but an out of tune bow will group arrows. I've done it and seen others do it as well. The honest to God truth is if you can't group arrows at 20 yards you either are not doing things the same way every time, or you can't hold steady enough to do it.

Sure, tuning a bow will help it be more forgiving, but it isn't going to magically shrink your 3 inch groups into having 3 arrows touching everytime. If it does I believe it was more in your head than anything.

I think another thing people miss or don't do when tuning is number thier arrows. If you take a systematic aproach to tuning, it's pretty hard to miss things. If nock fit was an issue and you had your arrows numbered, it would show up as an arrow problem, not a tuning problem. If you have the same one or two arrows missing the mark everytime it's time to start looking over the arrow. Not tweaking on the bow. Either nock fit, alignment, weight or spine. Or a damaged or warped arrow possibly.

Paul

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

All of the above stated issues are important and often overlooked. Proper center shot is also overlooked, and can be important especially in long range shooting.

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

How do you check for proper nock fit? Also on my knocks they have a little bump on the side are these suppose to be the same on every shaft?

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

Ditto on the hand placement and torque. IMO, proper and consistent hand placement and avoiding or limiting torque is in the top 5 of what many shooters take for granted, or do not know how important hand placement and torque avoidance is.

Centering a rest is up there too. I wonder how many shooters don't take the time to center a rest, or believe that a perfectly centered rest is a one size fits all adjustment. On one of my compounds, after a week of shooting frustration I determined that I have to set my rest slightly off center, to the right (window). I concluded that the cut of the riser, the grip, and my anchor on the particular bow, for some unknown reason will not let me perfectly center the rest and get good accuracy (flight).

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

That leads me to another thing I think people get confused about. Often people read these threads or read something in a magazine and think there is a particular setting for a particular bow. I see that question often on different boards. I own such and such model of bow, does anyone know what my nock point or center shot should be? Well we could give you a good starting point, but that's pretty much what it is, a starting point. That's why you tune a bow, to make it respond to your particular set up and shooting style. You might get lucky and someone elses specs might work. That's not always the case though, it's a trial and error kind of thing.

If I know I am going to shoot broad heads out of my bow I don't even bother getting all detailed on tuning it to begin with. I just sort of eyeball things, and maybe shoot it thru paper a few times to make sure I am pretty close. Cause the chances are I will just have to move everything anyway to tune for broad heads. I normally aim for bullet holes or a slight high tear.

Paul

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

Xclent points, Paul.

Matching broadhead and fieldpoint weights and weights of mounted arrows:

As I was working on my new set of (fixed) broadheads last night and determined that the 125 gr. broadhead weights varied from 124 grains to 138 grains, I was reminded that matching the weights of broadheads, fieldpoints, and mounted shafts is another commonly ignored tuning method that is often not considered when setting up shafts and shooting in, and troubleshooting bad arrow flight, bad groups, inconsistent accuracy, etc.

It has been my experience that many shooters;

- Do not confirm that the fieldpoints are the weight as stated on the package or by the clerk at the bow shop. - Do not confirm that the fieldpoints they are using to shoot-in closely match the weight of the broadhead they will be using.
- Do not confirm that their broadheads weigh what the package states they weigh, and are closely matched in individual weight. A friend of mine once traced a flight problem to some broadheads he was using that were supposed to be 125-grain but were actually 140-grain heads.
- Do not confirm that the total weight of their mounted shafts closely match each other.

How close is close? I personally do not feel comfortable with any variance over 4-5-grains which includes the bare shaft weight. I have known others who accepted a greater variance in weight. However, being it is not that difficult to apply certain methods to match or closely match weights, I choose to hold to the 4-5-grain limit.

The "Catch 22" of matching weights (scaled) is that the spine of all shafts in a dozen of shafts being the same is never a sure thing. Therefore, it could be that that "flier" is not the result of a bent or warped shaft, or that the broadhead is not mounted straight. Rather, it could be that the spine of the "flier" is marginal and is varied just enough that it will not fly as well with the same weight up front as is on the rest of the shafts.

However, not to make things too complex, I stay with just matching weights. If I get a "flier" and it appears that the problem is a spine issue, I might tinker with it by adding or subtracting weight to see if I can get the shaft to fly true. If trying to get the shaft to fly consistently true starts to become a major undertaking, I put the shaft in the hedge-apple and squirrel-shooting batch.

Is doing all this an overkill? Not from my experience. However, I have known shooters, and still do, that just buy some arrows slap on a broadhead, nock the shaft on a poorly tuned and ill-cared for bow, and get away with it…..for awhile.

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

from what I gather if you have two bare shafts and the weights vary, so will the spine. Esecially with carbons. So if you weigh your arrows and there is a large weight difference with one of them and you rule out the tip or insert (you could do this by checking foc), chances are the spine will be off as well. Of course if your tip weight is off it will effect your spine as well, I don't think to the same degree though.

Those are very good points about varifying your head weights. Every good archer should own a grn scale to weigh thier arrows and components with. I have found most components to be within better than a half a grn of each other. Most of the weight variances I see are within the shafts themselves.

Paul

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

I have been reading this thread and really enjoy what you guys have posted thank you.I had problems paper tuning one of my bows tonight and finalylly found that I was using a slightly warped arrow and also wieghed my field tip just to rule out that varience.I also found that shooting from the position that I was shooting from would not allow a good paper tune.Also the other day a guy I know wanted me to install a shoot though rest on his oldie Fread Bear compound.After drilling and tapping the burger button hole and installing the rest then tryting to find center I found that there was no way that riser would allow that rest because of the cut out[:@]If he shoots feathers he may obtain fair arrow flight.Bill D>

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

Excelent points c903 , if your arrows arnt as close to identical as you can get , then they wont shoot close to each other . Spot hog has a news letter on their web site about this . They shot a dozzen arrows they thought were pretty well matched only to find that the shooting machine shot them in a socerball sized group . I belive spine was the culpret .

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

I just noticed that a couple of people had asked a question regarding how to adjust your nocks for a proper fit to the string and how to gauge the fit.

Some leave the fitting to natural nock wear after having shot numerous arrows. I consider this method to be a method that would require a lot of shooting and the nock may still not wear to a proper fit or each nock wear equally.

For tight nocks, some shooters will lightly sand the nock grove until he or she obtains the fit they prefer. I have never liked the sanding method because sanding has to weaken and distort the nock.

I am sure there are others that use different methods, but here is mine.

I still prefer and use the boiling water method:

1. With bow and arrows ready, and a cup of cold water sitting close by, I get a small pan of water boiling.
2. Once the water is boiling I submerge the nock just to the depth of the nock groove, and slowly stir in about a 3"-4" diameter the number of times that I have previously and experimentally determined is sufficient for the particular nock.
3. I found that 6-7 stirs was usually sufficient to soften the nock end for the larger glue-on nocks, and about 5 stirs for uni-nocks. However, you have to gauge for yourself. Just do not overly soften the nock.
4. For nocks that are too tight, once I have softened the nock I then snap the nock on my string 3-4 times, and then quickly dip the nock in the cup of cold water.
5. For nocks that are too loose, once I have softened the nock I snap the nock on the string an give the nock tip a quick squeeze, then quickly dip the nock in the cup of cold water. I do this until I get the fit I want. If I have squeezed the nock too much, I then readjust the fit using the "tight nock" method.

After I have pre-fitted and thoroughly cooled my nocks, I then check each one for proper fit:

1. I snap the shaft on my string and first check for a nock being too loose by hold the bow horizontal with the shaft hanging vertically. If the nock is to loose, the shaft will fall off. I set the shaft aside in a
"too loose" pile to be readjusted.
2. If the shaft does not fall off, I then gently pull the shaft using just two fingers. If in my judgement it takes too much pressure to dislodge the nock, I put the shaft in my "too tight" pile.
3. If the shaft requires a gentle pressure to pull the nock off the string, I put the shaft in my "good fit" pile.
4. I then readjust the nocks that did not pass muster.

For fit, I prefer that the entire grove have a slight pressure on the string. This helps keep the string bottomed out in the nock groove. I do not like the string to first slap the bottom of the nock groove before driving the shaft off the bow. The string slap in a nock can throw your groups off.

This is MY method. Some shooters are opposed to the "boiling" method, believing that the method weakens the nock. I have never had nock breakage that I contributed to having weakened the nocks using the boiling water method. In fact, I have only blown 1 nock in 40-years of shooting.

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

Thanks to all that have added to this thread. It's really opened my eyes to some of the things I would normally not think about.

RE: What you believe is commonly overlooked when tuning or troubleshooting.
 

I use a slightly different method for checking and tweaking my nocks.
For checking I nock an arrow and grab the tip of the arrow and pull it off the string (straight out the front as if being shot). If the string moves (toward direction of pull) any more than an inch or so I adjust my nock by placing a allen wrench head in the nock and slightly prying it until I get my desired fit. If the arrow pulls off without moving the string (nock too loose) I throw it away because I've tried everything to make them tighter and after a few shots their right back to being loose.