Ok someone school me here. How does one tune by starting arrow long and cutting down and what to look for. Setting up my qad rest from scratch. Set it up for center? Then what. How does one distinguish between arrow length and rest adustment. These arrows are coming fletched. Should I strip the fletching off of one, then bare shaft tune?
Set your rest to centershot.
The spine changes with length. The shorter the arrow, the stiffer the arrow reacts.
How to tune? Well I use bareshafts, but as long as you are on the stiff side it's probably all you need to worry about with a centershot compound. If you don't have a saw to cut down the arrows you can alter your draw weight or point weight to stiffen or weaken the arrow reaction. More draw weight, more point weight weakens the arrow, less of one or both will stiffen. I find it easiest to use two bareshafts with electric tape where vanes would be to get weight on the arrow correctly, and then one maybe two fletched arrows. Shoot them at the same spot and tune til you get them to same poi. I prefer to not make rest adjustments for left/right impact at this point. I'll use yoke adjustments or shim the cams to get left/right. If I can't clean it up with that it's in the spine of the shaft usually, but some bows can be very grip sensitive so there's that too. High/low, which is the first adjustment you should try to correct, I'll either use the rest or nock point depending on the bow. Some bows should have the arrow running center of the Berger, some (Mathews) should have the nock point centered between the axles. On a centered in between the axles bow I set nock point and leave it, make up/down adjustments with the rest. On a Berger height bow I leave the rest alone and adjust the nock height. Once I get bareshafts dialed in at 20-30 yards I'll use micro-adjustments on the rest to dial in broadheads to field points at 60-75 yards.
You can start out just broadhead tuning. Don't need to use bareshafts, they just save you money on broadhead targets. Start close with your broadheads (20 yards), shoot two broadhead arrows followed by a field point or two. Do it repeatedly if necessary to get a consistent impact area. You can use a piece of paper to label your arrow impacts and pull each arrow after each shot if busting them up is going to be a problem.
If I can't get broadheads to come together with my field points increasing the spine usually fixes it. That's how I know I have too weak a spine for my hunting arrows. Hopefully someone has a better method but I haven't found the charts to be but so helpful, they will usually set you up with a weak arrow. Fine for target archery, for the best broadhead flight you want a stiffer spine.
