Tuning advice please

Matblack

Member
Hi everyone

I'm seeking a little advice re: bow tuning

I've watched a few YouTube videos and from what I can glean my sight should sit pretty much above my arrow. Mine seems to be quite a long way to the left of the arrow.

I've strung my bow, propped it up and and taken a few steps back and I'm thinking that may be the centre shot is off with the arrow tip further to the left than I might have expected although I know it is supposed to sit slightly to the left of the string.

I presume that this will make my arrows fly left, if I'm then chasing this with my sight it seems to follow it would off to the left too?

This bow hasn't been regularly shot for 11 years and I'm not convinced it was precisely set up then so there is a good chance the button is too far through the riser and pushing centre shot left.

The annoying thing is the bow is shooting OK and the last thing I want to do is bugger it up playing around.

The only thing which makes me question this is I've been shooting at 10/20/30/40m to get some sight marks and as I move back there doesn't seem to be a need to adjust the sight more to the left. I may be wrong here but I would presume that if centre shot was off the problem would get worse (I'd need to adjust more horizontaly left) at longer distances? Of course as I move back my groups are opening up so I may not be noticing or natural tendency to pepper the target may be masking the drift.

And all this makes me wonder if I shouldn't have opened this can of worms in the first place 😁

Thanks for listening
 

LionOfNarnia

Supporter
Supporter
After 11 years it might be worth checking that the button is still moving smoothly too.

- I can't comment on the sight, mine is more than 2" left of the string ;)

(I'm cross-dominant & shoot right handed but left eyed [both eyes open])
 

Timid Toad

Moderator
Staff member
Supporter
Fonz Awardee
Ironman
Ok. If It ain't broke, don't fix it.
*But* after 11 years you're going to be rusty too so more practice will help.
If you want a simple check, do some bareshaft tuning at 30m and see what's going on there. If it's doing something a bit mad, and your curiosity is piqued, there's an excellent bow set up guide on here by Buzz Lit Beer. I think it's a sticky in the Tuning section.
 

geoffretired

Supporter
Supporter
The annoying thing is the bow is shooting OK and the last thing I want to do is bugger it up playing around.
If you count the turns you make on the button and on the sight, you can put everything back as it was, if you need to.
 

Matblack

Member
Thanks everyone

The more I think about it, and I've thought about it a lot!

I think these arrows are over spine, I bought new lighter limbs which are not only 4lbs lighter but 2" longer. I suspect my original arrows were upper end of their table for the old setup as I was new, they are now possibly two tables too stiff which might explain a lot of compensation to the left with the sight.

I'll speak to someone at my club about borrowing a bow scale 🙂👍🏻
 

Rik

Supporter
Supporter
Regarding the "sight not moving between distances": you can get that even when things are obviously wrong. I've seen it before after using a "stiff button" setup method. It's just that you can set two things wrong, which more or less cancel out (in terms of sight position).
If the sight isn't in the right alignment at the start of doing the setup, then it will skew any results you get. So any setup process starts with aligning *everything*.
 

Matblack

Member
And so I think I have come to a conclusion; I bought these limbs as a gateway back into archery and because I didn't want to go straight back to the 68" 28lbs I had before, I reckon I was drawing those to about 32-33lbs with my draw length (it was a long time ago).

I think I'm going to get some 70" 30lbs and wind them out a bit, its a big jump but the 24s are quite easy for me to pull now and I was probably being a bit pessimistic when I went down to 24lbs in the first place.

New limbs should bring me a lot closer to the ideal draw weight for the arrows I have, and an extra bit of power will do no harm for longer distances :)

Does that sound reasonable?
 
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