"The importance of paper tuning every arrow in your arsenal." By Andy Callaway
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From my own experience, paper-tuning each arrow is a crucial step regardless of how meticulous your arrow-building process is. This idea or method does not include or refer to bare shaft tuning. I don't consider bare shaft tuning necessary for tournament archers, as it's more for fine-tuning your bowhunting setup to mesh and perform better with broadheads. I prefer to keep things simple and focus on what my mind needs to know.
In the past, I would only group tune my arrows, and whatever arrow didn't fly well with others, I would send that one to the side and grab another. Which always caused me grief because you put so much time into building arrows. Cutting shafts, prepping them, fletching them, and not to mention the cost involved. Then, finding out one won't tune in or group with the others is irritating. Now that I'm getting older and my shot isn't as good as it once was, group tuning hasn't been the best way. I've needed to find different ways to help get that arrow to hit my mark without immediately tossing it in the trash. Since I started paper-tuning every arrow individually, my groups have tightened up, and I've known I can grab any arrow out of my stool or quiver, and they will hit the same.
So, how do you paper-tune each arrow? It's straightforward. Typically, all of your arrows will bullet hole or tear similarly. However, you'll often get an outlier wanting to perform differently. Before tossing that arrow in the trash, try this tuning method.
STEPS:
#1. Shoot all your arrows through paper, and get your bow tuned with your shafts as usual.
#2. Find out by the tune if you have an outlier that doesn't want to bullet hole with the rest of your shafts. Then, focus primarily on that arrow shaft.
#3. Take the outlier, rotate the nock in 1/8" increments to the left or right, and then reshoot that shaft through paper. That particular shaft should have a sweet spot where it will bullet hole using the same setup/tune as your other arrows from that batch.
#4. You can rotate the nock as far as you like in either direction so long as you're getting rest clearance.
Your vanes do not have to align from arrow to arrow. They can be in different orientations if their spacing and helical/offset are the same. Shooting the arrow several times through paper is essential to help avoid a random tear caused by face pressure or torque in your bow. I will rotate my nock until that difficult arrow shoots a perfect bullet hole to match the rest of my shafts in that batch. You can rotate the nock as much as needed as long as your vanes are getting rest clearance. Your vanes can have different orientations to each other. You can have one where the primary vane is straight up and another slightly left or right. Following the process helps to make your shafts perform to their peak performance.
After paper tuning, you should 100% still group tune at a distance you feel comfortable with. Paper and group tuning can greatly affect your overall accuracy from arrow to arrow. The yardage that I shoot the most for group tuning is 40 yards. It's a good medium and works well.
I also had another bow mechanic work on my bow until about eight years ago when I moved out of Wisconsin. So, I had to learn how to work on my equipment quickly. All the tools LCA supplies have helped me keep my equipment in top shape and have been easy to learn and use. With paper tuning in mind, The Archer's Mat from Last Chance Archery has helped me in not having to bring up the internet to figure out how to decipher what I need to do to get that perfect bullet hole. The Archer's Mat contains everything you need to know about paper tuning, adjustments, visuals, etc. It's an excellent reference for all those tuning methods and tips we forget, even after repeatedly doing them. Be sure to check it out!
I hope this tip helps everyone succeed in their future archery endeavors, whatever they may be.
Be sure to find Andy Callaway on social media.
