How tuned is 'tuned'?

[GF.]

I moved my rest a little bit yesterday...

Damnedest thing; for the first dozen shots or so, I was hitting high with the FPs. Decided to see how the BH flew, and it was either on target or a shade low, dezpending on the range. At which point the FPs came back down to where they had been hitting before, and then thinigs settled out with the BHs hitting a shade lower - maybe 2.5" than the FPs at 22 yards. So basically I've done my 'walk-back' tuning from 0-22 yards...

But at 22 yards, I put three shots onto a nickel with the BH, and the 4th was less than an inch off of the center of the first 3 (these were all 1 at a time, so I was able to see the holes from the prior shots without shooting up my fletchings :D )

With hunting season a week away, would you suggest adjusting the sights for the BH and calling it good, or seeing how things shake out at longer range first, or would you wait for the new batch of arrows to show up before I mess with anything else?

I'm thinking that the answer is of course to hold off, just in case the different fletchings affect the tuning, but since I have more time today than I'll have at any time 'til I hit the ground in the mountains, I was thinking maybe I could trust the shafts to be consistent enough that I could gamble a bit and work with what I've got....

[ncboman]

At which point the FPs came back down ...

:confused:

any kind of cause/effect or just magic? :D

I doan hunt with arrows I haven't checked out well but that's just me. :)

[ncboman]

bow tune;

20yds, bh vs fp

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v50/ncboman/Ohio%2008/Archery1108139.jpg

double check.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v50/ncboman/Ohio%2008/Archery1108141.jpg

:)

[Twanger]

GF - sounds pretty good to me.

Like Bowman, I shoot every arrow I hunt with first, before taking them to the field
.
With fixed blade heads I shoot every arrow/broadhead combination and then touch up the blades prior to hunting.

With mechanicals I don't... but I do shoot the arrows with FP's to make sure they are flying right.

[dave-t.]

It just makes sense to shoot your bheads and arrows. One can be a bit different than the rest of them with alignment, or any other thing. I once had a nock fall out durring a shot on a deer, and I missed wide and low :mad:. Split end on the arrrow.

Sometimes you find an arrow that just won't do what the others do. It's not very common now though.

GF- the old way was to resight for the b-heads and go get it. It may work for you if the b-heads are flying true, just drop the sight bracket down, shoot all distances to check, and make adjustments as needed. It may be worth trying another time to bring the b-heads to the practice tips with tuning. If you b-heads are straight low, raise the rest until the both heads hit together. If both are together over various distances, you know you're tuned and flying right.

Right now it sounds like you are nock high and the arrow could be dropping more dramatically at 30yds than your sights suggest.

[GF.]

:confused:

any kind of cause/effect or just magic? :D

I doan hunt with arrows I haven't checked out well but that's just me. :)

Just magic :D

Nah... I just really focused on form and by the end of my session I managed to tick 5 shots (FP) off of an old shaft stuck in the ground before I snapped it with the sixth...

And having gotten feedback from you guys, plus having had a chance to sleep on the whole deal, I've decided to leave everything as-is until the new arrows show up.... (So it's actually a good thing that I ran out of time to mess with it yesterday.... :rolleyes: )

I figure the new arrows may work perfectly with either FP of broadheads, or they may shoot just like what I've got already. Either way, I just have to back off enough to make sure that they're sinking naturally and not planing into the ground.

And if it gets real ugly, I can hunt that first day with the one 'old' arrow, because I know where that one hits out to about 25 yards, and that's easily as far as I've ever been really confident with the recurve anyway. I'll have plenty of time to mess with tuning once I'm there, because I'm pretty sure that first day is going to kick my tail pretty good, and I have to telecommute to work on Monday anyway... So I can work a little, shoot a little, visit with my dad and do all the other things that I'll be there to do...

But speaking of tuning....

I just learned something that I don't like about my rest... The vertical and horizontal adjustments aren't independent - you loosen one set screw, and you'd better remember where everything was.

I had a pretty good recollection of where it had been and I was shooting bullets the other day, so I think I'm pretty much OK.... But just in case... How would I spot an issue? Seems like the arrow ought to rest in the same plane as the string, no? To minimize the FX of paradox? (this assumes a release, of course...). I guess if my sights were suddenly 'off' when shooting the FPs or if I can prove to myself that the arrows are planing off in one direction or another, but man, it just tweaks me that I didn't realize that the rest would move side-to-side on me until it had already gonandunnit....:mad:

[dave-t.]

Mark with tape or paint. Finger nail polish works fine. A thin strip of electrical tape will work short term, and when you get set the way you want it, peel the sucker off or mark with something more permanent. Even scratching the finish on the rest will mark the spot.

[GF.]

Oh, trust me... I'm a big believer in etching a permanent mark on stuff once I've got it where I want it! :D Loctite's good, too.....

I've never been too terribly shy about modifying things to suit my needs of them...Well, not since the first time I took a drill to a brand-new fiberglass topper on my truck so that I could bolt on the mounts for the roof rack system. After you've put a dozen or more holes into a shiny, new $800 purchase, a scratch here & there just to make sure something is 100% reliable isn't such a big deal....

That said, I still won't get into any more DIY gunsmithing unless I can find somebody to walk me through it step by step... :o

Don't ask..... :eek:


And I hope by now that I've kind of established myself as a guy who at least makes an honest effort to go easy on anything that borders on profanity unless it adds very specific emphasis or a good dose o' humor but....

OK.... Now I'm pissed....

Those arrows I ordered? I finally couldn't stand it any longer, so I e-mailed the outfit. And then I was getting a sketchy feeling about it not having spoken to a live person, so I called....

"Hello, and thanks for calling. Our call center will be closed for another week so that our employees can get out and do some hunting....."

Exsqueeze me? You guys half-way shut down the operation for the month of September and you didn't happen to mention on your website that things like custom-fletched arrows might take a little longer than usual to get out????

And it gets cuter by the minute.

I ordered on the 28th of August. They took my money on the 28th of August. I didn't hear a peep until the 14th of September, after I let 'em know I was unhappy with the way things were developing, and then all the response I get is "here's your invoice; thanks for your business".

And the shipping date was.... Oh, lemme see here... Yeah, the 15th of September, which means they slapped them together after the phone call and the e-mail that said "Hey, where are my arrows, 'cuz I need them ASAP and if you haven't shipped those yet, please call me, because I'll probably want to ship them to where I'm going instead of where I am."

:mad::mad::mad:


So now UPS has the arrows, so I can't change my shipping to get 'em here any quicker; I'm leaving on the 19th, and I've got an ETA on the package of..... the 20-freakin'-1st.

You know..... If it hadn't been two weeks, an e-mail and a phone call later, I'd be really pleased that they got my order out the door on the same day that I asked after it; but at this point I have more of a feeling that I got a last-minute rush-job just to keep me from cancelling and disputing the charges that they pushed through.... And believe me, I was giving it some thought.... Why do I think this happens pretty often with them?

So I guess what I think of this whole operation will depend now on UPS coming through ahead of schedule and the quality of the fletching job. If it were my business, I don't think I'd leave a customer's satisfaction entirely in the hands of UPS.... :rolleyes::confused:

There are real reputable mail-order outfits out there that might have run into the same situation, but JMODO the reputable outfit would've

A) Not billed the customer until the order was out the door. (Duh.)

B) Set a realistic expectation for the shipping date during the order process. Stuff comes up, yes, but having most of your staff take the month off to chase bulls isn't exactly something that just came up.

C) When they jumped on this order because of my raising the concern about travel dates & deadlines, they would have

1) Let me know that's what was actually happening
2) Assured me that quality of the job would not be affected, and that they would waive their usual 'no returns on custom arrows' policy if I decided I wasn't satisfied with the work

3) Upgraded the shipping to overnight (at no extra charge) just to make sure the order arrives in time and that I'll have a hope of checking the tune before I leave, and

4) If it would save a day in the delivery schedule, just overnight a half-dozen "off the shelf" finished arrows to use until the custom job is delivered.

Now, it may well be the case that somebody did have the time to do these properly and get 'em out the door just as quickly as they would've gotten out whether they were done custom or just grabbed out of a bin; I guess I won't know about that until they arrive and I can see the workmanship.

So that's a half a dozen steps that these guys could have taken that would give me some peace of mind that I'm getting great customer service instead of just them doing whatever they have to do to avoid my refusing to accept the order and disputing those charges that they were so quick to send through.

Is it just me, or is there something about Utah?....:rolleyes:

[GF.]

I just got a call from the arrow supplier I was ranting about.

Very nice lady called me up to apologize for the delay, and she's gonna see if she can get UPS to either speed up the delivery here or divert/reroute the shipment to my folks' place in CO.

So I'm a whole lot closer to being a happy customer than I was yesterday, but my fingernails aren't getting any chance to grow back just yet....

Looks like I'd best make sure I'm good and happy with my #1 and #2 pins and my last un-tattered arrow, just in case something comes up on Sunday. Good news is that I replaced the moleskin on the drop-away last night and I'm hitting right on with the FPs, so nothing appears to be jacked up....

Yet....

[GF.]

OK, so I just got another e-mail from the arrows supplier....

UPS can't help out with anything that's already in transit, so they're apparently going to build up another dozen custom arrows and 2nd Day them to my folks' place so that they'll be there when I arrive, and I can return the 2nd set when it works.

Can't get much better than that.

Except... Oh, crap... I hope they won't need a signature in the mountains :eek:

One more e-mail....

MHB

[GF.]

Well, since I'm definitely not going to risk changing anything at this point, I shot the broadheads last night and walked 'em off to 35 yards.

Oddly enough, they still hit a bit low and right of the field points at 17-22 yards, but they're right on target for practical purposes, hitting just off the edge of one of the 5, 2" (or so) circles on the Block. I just checked quickly from 22 and put another arrow into the exact same 1" group where I'd put the 4 in a row the other day, so I figured it just means I'm more accurate with broadheads.:cool: Always have been, seems to me, though I can't figure how that could be a real thing....:rolleyes:


Anyway, the BH sinks like a rock between 22 and 28... but so does a field point. Using the #2 pin at that range, I got several 2"-3" groups with the BH striking just a shade lower than the FPs. Backed off to 35 yards and I was shooting into 3" (which is about as well as I've ever shot) with no rhyme or reason to which head landed where within the group. So the BH & FP may not hit in exactly the same place, but at short range the difference is too small to make any difference and at 35 yards the difference is too small to prove, based on how well I can shoot at that range. And I'm OK with that :D

And oddly enough, the BH seems to fly flatter from 5-22 yards. FP float 3-4" high between 15 and 17 and the BH never seemed to go much beyond 2" high, nor any lower than FP from 22-28. And shooting the BH with the #2 pin from about 20 yards, the POI was only 3" high.

So at this point, I'm gonna put the razor edges back to right and call it good, at least 'til Monday....

And just in case..... Wish me luck!

[Twanger]

Sounds really good GF... 3 inch groups at 35 yards is EXCELLENT with broadheads!
You're ready to make some elk sausage. :D

[dave-t.]

That is good enough.

I can't explain it either, but Tuesday I shot a group at 30yrds with Montecs that made me :eek::D

Consistantly b-head hitting 1" straight low of the field point arrow, and usually a 3" group at 30 has me happy, but Tuesday...man I wish I could shoot like that every day.

[GF.]

The new arrows really surprised me. I'd hoped they'd fly the same as the old ones, which I thought were doing just fine, but the new ones just seem to shoot better, and all pretty much in the same group.

Shot a 2" group at about 30 yards, aiming at the head of a golf tee stuck in the Block. Shaved a little off of it with the BH and called it good....:D