Transcription
So today we're going to go over how to spine index arrows and then also how to knock index arrows and what each one does. At the end, I'm going to go over how I personally use both methods to optimize my arrows for tournament situations.
The first thing we're going to do is go over how to spine index our arrows, which is pretty simple and straightforward. You basically put your arrows on the spine indexer. Usually, you'll do it before you get them built, but I'm just going to give you an example here. You put the arrow, pull up this little gauge, and then you'll just set the arrow in there like that. You put your gauge at zero.
The way that I like to do it is I will hold the spine tester itself and then I'll just tap the arrow right above the bearings. That way, I'm not inducing any type of deflection in the arrow, and then it'll give me the true read. I'll just move my gauge to zero, and from there, you can put your weight on the arrow and count how many times it turns around.
With this one, if you can see, it's on zero, and then we're going to go one, two, and it's right at 250, which is a 250 spine. It's going to be close to 250 because the arrow's cut at 28 and three-quarters right now. If you get a dozen arrows and they're 32-inch arrows, which is what they generally come in, they will send them to you from the factory bare shaft at 32 inches, and then you cut down your arrow to whatever length you're going to be shooting.
But they're basing the spine off of 28 inches of that arrow. So if it's cut down to 28 inches, then you're going to get a true read of that spine. Right now, it's at around 250. What you're going to do is take the arrow and spin it on the point. Then I'll just slowly tap it around. I'll just turn the arrow and tap right above the bearing on the spine indexer until I find the strongest side of the arrow.
We're right at 249. 249 points of deflection for the spine is the strongest point of the spine on this arrow. You can continue to do that and run it down to find the weakest point, which looks like it's right around here, which is right at 252. The higher the number, the weaker the spine because it flexes more, which gives this more movement.
So the more it flexes, the more this little arm on this gauge goes down, and it'll give it more numbers. The lower the number, the stronger the spine; the higher the number, the weaker the spine. So right now, we're looking at about 252 for the weakest side of the spine on this arrow.
What I generally do is mark the strong side of the spine. You could do the weak side as well, but I usually do the strong side of the spine. I'll put a mark somewhere around here, and once I start getting ready to fletch, I will put a mark for that spine indicator that I marked down here later on. Then I will vein up my arrows so that they are all uniform.
Every one of my arrows has the same fletching configuration based on the strong side of the spine. Then what I'll do is take all my arrows outside and shoot them through the paper. Once I shoot them through the paper, then I will knock index, which we're going to go out and do here in a minute.
So we're out here in the garage right now, and I just basically cleaned up the paper. I had some holes in the old paper, so I just went ahead and pulled paper through and got a new sheet of paper. I don't know if we're actually going to do the paper tuning in here or the knock indexing in here because when I start shooting, the sun's going to be directly behind me.
So when I have to turn the camera that way, it's probably going to just be a glare of sun. I'm going to try to figure out where to do the actual knock indexing while I'm after I set this up. But for now, I'm going to show you guys how I actually set up the paper to do this in a uniform kind of way.
The first thing that I'll do, like I said, is get a new sheet of paper on the paper tuner. From there, I'm going to take a black sharpie and find the lines on this paper. The first thing I like to do is find the lines on this paper and just mark down the edge of the metal.
There have been a lot of times, especially in situations like this one, where the paper kind of goes all the way over. I will aim a little too close to that metal, and when the arrow goes through, even if I don't have direct contact with the metal, the arrow is flexing. What it'll do is flex into that metal and just snap the arrow in half, and then chaos breaks loose wherever I'm at.
So I like to go ahead and mark the edge of this metal just to give myself a reference of where the paper actually ends and the metal begins. That's the first thing I do. The second thing that I do is set my bow or my sight on my bow to about 50 yards because I usually do this at about five yards.
You're going to see the most incorrect flight pattern from the arrow at that distance. That's where I usually do it because I want to get the most of the imperfections of the arrow out if I can. So that's what I'll usually do, about five yards.
Then what I'll do is set my sight to 50 yards. The reason I set it at 50 yards is going to be different for everybody, depending on your bow speed and everything else, arrow weight, and all that. But for me, what it does is it makes my impact from where I'm aiming about an inch to an inch and a half high.
That means I can put something like this on the paper, put dots here, here, here, here, and here. Usually, I'll just run the dots all the way across. That way, if I make a bad shot or something like that, I can always just shoot the next dot, and I don't have to come up here and put another dot on the paper.
But there's usually, for me, I've had it to where there are usually two positions on the arrow that have really good tears. I have to differentiate between the two, and usually, I'll have to shoot those two knock locations multiple times just to give myself more holes to give myself enough data to say, "Well, this one's probably a little bit better."
What I'll do is shoot the first three or four, depending on how many fletchings you're using. I'll shoot those positions first, pick out the two that are the best, and then use the rest of the dots to shoot those two positions. Then I'll just give myself more holes and base my decision off of what I see through the paper.
So we're going to go ahead and set this up somewhere. It may not be right here; we're going to set it up somewhere, and then I'm going to start shooting the paper. I'll show you the process that I use for paper tuning with knock indexing.
So the next step, I think we're going to do this in this location, this paper tuning portion of it. The sun's in the worst spot ever, so hopefully, it's not too bright for you guys. I'll try to do my best to fix it if it is in post.
The next thing that I do after I set up a paper tuner is obviously you don't want your arrow to go through the paper and then your knock be sticking out of the paper, and you can't tell what the tear actually was. But the other thing that most people don't pay attention to is that you've got to make sure that you set your paper far enough away from the target that when the point touches the actual target, the knock is all the way clear of the paper.
If you don't, it could be touching the target and kicking the arrow based on what it does on the target, giving you a false tear through the paper.
One thing I forgot to mention is that you do have to give yourself a basic tear. You have to shoot three to four or five arrows through the paper, different arrows, and give yourself a base paper tear. If you just take one arrow and shoot it through the paper, and that one arrow tears different than the other 11 in your dozen, then you're going to be tuning your bow to that one anomaly in that dozen arrows.
Basically, you're going to shoot three, four, or five arrows out of that dozen through the paper, pick which tear is more consistent through the five arrows that you shot, and tune your bow to that specific tear. Once you get your bow tuned to that tear, then you go in and start doing what we're about to do, which is knock indexing and turning the knocks on all the arrows to get the best paper tear for each specific arrow.
All right, so we're going to go ahead and start doing this now. I have each of my arrows numbered, so I have one through twelve on all of my arrows in my quiver. We're going to start out with arrow number one, and we're going to shoot that specific arrow four times through the paper.
I'm going to take that arrow, shoot it, pull it, shoot it, pull it, shoot it, pull it, shoot it, pull it. Every time I shoot it, I'm going to turn the knock one spacing to the left or the right on that arrow until the next vein is facing up because I'm shooting a three-fletch configuration on these specific arrows.
So we're just going to shoot that one arrow three different times and figure out which position tears the best.
All right, so number one, we have the knock index. You can see that silver sharpie mark on the top of the arrow. That's going to be our first location, so we're going to shoot it through the paper like that first.
Okay, so there's the first tear. Generally, I'll make some markings on that paper as I'm doing it, but I'm going to wait until I shoot all three times just so I can show you what I do as I shoot three different knock locations on the arrow. That way, you guys aren't not being able to see what I'm doing.
So, okay, so now that was where it was. Now I'm going to turn the arrow, and then I'm just going to make sure it's on the rest properly.
Okay, now we'll shoot the third and last position on this knock. So we're going to throw it back on here. It's going to be counterclockwise again until the next vein is facing up, just like that.
All right, okay, so we just shot all three positions for arrow number one. Like I said before, I'm going to show you guys how I would mark this paper as I'm doing it, as I'm shooting.
Usually, after I shoot the first one, I'll mark it. So what I'm going to do is mark the first one, and I'll put this as position number one. So I'll put a one there, and then after I shoot the second one, I'll put two next to it. After I shoot the third one, I'll put three next to it.
Usually, if I'm shooting right here, the holes are going to be here on the paper. So what I can do is put a mark above those holes like this, which I'll have to do over here now, up here.
So we're going to go like this. We're going to have one line going all the way across, and then over here, I'm going to put one. That way, I know that this is arrow number one.
So this is going to be arrow number one, position one, position two, position three. Now I can choose between these three tears because all three were good shots. I can say, "Okay, I think that tear number three and tear number two were probably the best tears."
So I can shoot, I can reshoot aiming at maybe this dot right here and this dot, and I'll give myself a couple extra just in case I have a bad shot in there. So there's going to be the aiming points for the next shots.
But I'm going to shoot two again right here. I'll probably shoot two twice, and then I'll shoot three twice, and then I'll just base my decision on where to actually put the index on the arrow based on what I see on paper.
So we just shot our two proofing arrows for each position, and they are both pretty good. But yeah, you can do the same thing, mark these after each shot, do three, three, and then two, two. If it's still up in the air and you can't really tell, you can put another dot here and shoot just like maybe a couple more and make sure that you can give yourself a little bit more information if you need to.
But I won't bore you guys with going through the entire dozen. I'll just shoot them all real quick, run through it really fast, and then at the end, after I get them all done, I'll show you guys the finished product.
I'm just going to continue doing this with each arrow all the way up. Every time I get another one, I'm going to put dots on this line, shoot those dots the next time, and I'm going to put the dot between the two arrow holes. That way, whenever I go to the next line up, I'm not stacked on top of arrows because sometimes the paper will rip between the two, and you can't really get a good read on what your arrow just did to the paper.
So I'm going to stagger the arrows, the shots on the paper. I think I'm just going to go with three because it looks a little bit better after a second look. So I'm going to go with three on this one, right?
So there's three. I'll just circle it, and that way I'll know I can go back here. Arrow one was number three, and that way I don't have to sit here and look at every hole for every arrow on this whole big piece of paper.
So that was my last shot with the last arrow. What I'm going to do now is take these arrows inside and put them all on the spine tester, like the actual thing that we did at the beginning of this video. I'm going to find out what the points of deflection are on the arrow based on where it just knock indexed.
So number three was the best one on number 12. I'm going to go in and find out what my points of deflection at three are on this arrow and so on and so forth all the way down to arrow number one.
Okay, so we just came in from outside, and we just knock indexed all of our arrows through the paper. Before that, we spine indexed all of our arrows.
We have a mark on our arrow right here. This was the strong side of the spine; that's what I marked on this dozen of arrows. I marked the strong side spine, and then I went outside and knock indexed.
Basically, I just turned the knock until it got a good, perfect bullet hole through the paper, and I did that with all my arrows to make all my arrows consistent.
Well, as you can see, the strong side of the spine, which was this one before, isn't the actual best spot on the arrow for a perfect bullet hole. This one is. So I marked this location by my knock, and now what I'm going to do is put all of my arrows back on the spine tester.
This is where, at the beginning of the video, I told you guys that I combined the two processes to get more out of my arrows, just a little bit more out of the arrows. This is how I do that.
I'm going to put this back on the spine tester. Okay, so there's our zero. Then we're going to take our weight and put it back on the arrow. So we're at 245 right now, like 247.
In this book, what I'm doing is writing down where my knock index spine was. As you can see, my weakest point was where these numbers were, my strongest point were these numbers, and then my knock index time, which is where my knock set it through the paper to get a perfect bullet hole, is the spine deflection that I'm getting on the arrow.
The way that that helps is, say arrow number six had almost a perfect bullet hole on the second position, and it had almost a perfect bullet hole on the third position, and you can't really choose between the two.
What you can do is bring that arrow in, put it on here, and then figure out what the spine deflection number is on position two and position three. Then you can choose the position that is closest to the rest of your arrows where they're knock indexed.
That way, you have a similar spine facing upward on the arrow across all of your arrows. But yeah, that's how I combine the two processes to give me a little bit more information and build myself just a little bit better of an arrow.
So hopefully, this video helped you guys out. If you don't mind, please do like, share, comment, and subscribe to the videos. This is my first monetized video after a thousand subscribers, so thank you guys for subscribing to the channel.
And like always, I'll see you all in the next video.