Question ; How straight is ‘straight’ ??

[richard roop]

#161329

So ………….. How straight is straight and how much can a shaft be bent and still fly reasonably well ??

I usually spin my aluminum shafts on my thumbnail for a quick check. A smooth spin is a #1. A slight vibration is a #2 shaft and one that rattles on my thumb is an expendable #3 arrow.

The odd thing that I’ve noticed is that unless a shaft is noticeably bent, they all fly pretty well.

What say the assembled masses ?????

[Stephen Graf]

#161344

Now Richard I think you have opened a can of worms!  In my opinion there are very few “bent” shafts that won’t fly straighter than I can shoot.  In fact, I have noticed that some of my less straight wood arrows fly more consistently than my straightest arrows.

I think arrow straightness as a value added price point has been one of the greatest shams foisted on archers since the invention of inorganic arrows (aluminum, fiberglass, carbon).  Unfortunately, most buy right into it and shell over the bucks for literally nothing.

Which isn’t to say that there are not qualities that can be measured and that set a consistently accurate arrow apart from them that ain’t.  Fletching long enough and high enough to control the arrow, adequate FOC, mass weight, length, spine, diameter,  a good string nock fit, all add up to a good flying arrow.

This should get lively 😱

[David Coulter]

#161391

Steve’s an honest man, so anything he says about crooked, I’ll go with. Best bet is, of course, to shoot them. Maybe paper tune them to see if they are actually flying straight at the range they need to be. Our eyes don’t always tell the truth. Arrows flying straight is one of the keys to good penetration. I miss by days of aluminum and wood. I switched to carbon because they were cheaper in the long run for me. I was having diminishing success buying good leftover aluminum arrows on the auction. They do fly nice. Let us know how you make out, please, dwc

 

[Ralph]

#161458

IMHO straight is best but maybe we can get away with some crooked and such at close distances as long as the front of the arrow is in line with the back of the arrow. But if either end is pointing in a different direction than the other end things ain’t gonna get along with each other.  If the nock end is misaligned it’s not getting pushed true. If the tip end is misaligned it’s not leading true.

I think that 15 yards and less with big feathers and shooting at the paper plate sized (roughly) killing area on a deer there’s not much problem.

Get them as straight as you can and then shoot’em to see which are true.

Just my two bits…………………

 

[Raymond Coffman]

#161470

I agree with everyone 😁

At the the closer ranges we usually shoot , one can get away with a pretty crooked arrow ( primitive tack ) but I think for fine accuracy ( especially at longer ranges) tuned , balanced,  and straight is probably best imho…although I have shot ok, on occasion, with some pretty decrepit arrows.

Scout aka Ray

[Kees]

#161596

I ran into this last Summer.  All of my arrows are wood, fletched and all by me.  I have 6 arrow groups of various spines and wood species.  They aren’t fancy, but I have printed on them, with Magic Marker, the draw weight and what type of wood they are.  I also number each of the 6 so I can tell them apart.  Fletching is straight, so there is no twist as the arrow flies.

Having set the scene, I was shooting my Surewood arrows, spined at 40-45 pounds, at varying distances from 5 to 25 yards, in 5 yard increments.  One arrow invariably flew high and right, depending on the distance up to 1 1/2 foot off the paper plate target.  It was always the same arrow (#2), to the point that if I held off the paper plate at 7 o’clock it would land on target.  It had a bit of a bend and I rolled it straight after which it shot well.  Unfortunately, it took that same bend again after a while, with the same results.

Otherwise, I fully agree with Steve above.  Other arrows I have shoot just fine, despite being curved.  My feeling is that the shaft of that one arrow had a denser wood on one side which caused it to take a set and probably added to it going off at a tangent.  With the straight fletching it would always fly at the same angle, right and high.

I no longer have this problem as I hit the arrow #2 with another from 5 yards, but it was an interesting phenomenon!

~Kees~

[Stephen Graf]

#161604

If wood arrows have a fault, its that every now and again one will fly off target no matter how hard we try to fix it or make it straight.  Its been my experience that if an arrow flies like that, there’s nothing you can do about it but find some other use for the wood, or bust it as you did with another arrow  👹 😎

I had one that did a similar thing.  It flew a foot or more to the right no matter what I did.  And it was as straight as straight could be.  Wood, being organic is prone to having internal variations both visible and invisible.  Ain’t we all?

 

[richard roop]

#161605

This thing with wood shafts is probably why Mr. Hill would shoot his newly finished arrows at distance into a dirt bank and then bundle them as right – left & center shooters.

[aeronut]

#161608

Your observation about grain structure is correct Kees.  Every wood shaft is slightly different in its grain composition.  Some wood shafts will always try to go back to the form where nature had set them.

One thing you can do with one that continues to be cranky is re-fletch as a flu-flu.   I put blunts on them then toss a plastic drink bottle in the yard and shoot it.  Knock it around the yard until you are out of blunts then gather them up and start again.  This gives you a different range to shoot at every time you hit it.

Hang a bottle from a tree limb and shoot at them as the wind wiggles them around.  My granddaughter loves to do that.

[richard roop]

#161612

Here’s something to NOT do with plastic bottles.

NOT EVER !!!!

There’s a kit that you can buy to pump about 90 psi of air into a 2 liter plastic bottle.  Think popping a balloon on steroids plus. They’re sold to the air rifle crowd.  Seemed kinda cool so I set one up and hung it on my bales.  Backed off to the 60 yard line to make it challenging. 1st arrow just right. 2nd arrow just left. 3rd arrow just right again. 4th arrow; KABOOM!!! …….. and 4 bent arrows from the blast.

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