Tuning Your Recurve Bow – Part #4

In part 3 of our recurve tuning guide, you learned how to conduct the bare shaft test for figuring out proper arrow spine and alignment. Today, we’ll be discussing a very important aspect of any bow tuning regimen.

Proper Clearance

Clearance refers to the arrows capability to “clear” the bow without the fletchings on the arrow making direct contact with the bow. Improper clearance significantly reduces shooting accuracy and results in poorer arrow grouping, so it’s very important that we address it.

First, we’re going to need to determine if and where clearance issues are occurring. To do that, you will need one of the following:

• Dry foot powder (for Athlete’s foot); a good and cheap brand is Dactarin.
• Talc
• Dry deodorant (the kind that leaves annoying white stains on your clothes)

Try not to use dry foot powder in a can, as the layer of powder it creates is way too thick, making it useless for our clearance test and also annoyingly difficult to wash off. What we’re going for here is a substance that will stick firmly to your bow and arrow (more on this in a moment), though not so firmly that no trace would be created if you were to glide your finger across the substance. The substance also needs to be clearly visible to the eye (non-transparent).

Say you decide to go for the dry deodorant. You will want to apply a generous layer to the following areas:

1. The part of the arrow shaft between the nock and the fletchings (though not the nock itself as this won’t help)
2. The fletchings
3. Two inches of the arrow shaft below the fletchings
4. Arrow rest

Now go ahead and shoot a fletched arrow, while being careful not to disturb or touch the layers of substance you applied when drawing, aiming and shooting. Release the arrow, but make sure you are aiming at a hefty-enough target that’s capable of stopping your arrow without the fletchings digging into it. The next step is examining whether there are any visible markings that have appeared on the layer of dry deodorant.

• The most common problem is arrow fletchings not clearing the rest properly. This will be clearly identifiable thanks to the “skid marks” on the rest and the fletchings themselves. To fix this, begin rotating the nock on your arrow in the smallest increments possible, making sure to re-do the test after each nock adjustment. Repeat this as many times as possible until the fletchings achieve proper clearance. 
• If the above doesn’t help, you should try some lower profile fletchings, such as the parabolics.
• Make sure that you’ve completed the bare shaft test, and particularly that you’ve fixed any porpoising issues you might have had, as an incorrectly installed nocking point can reduce the fletchings’ capacity to clear the arrow  rest.
• As a last resort, try and re-center your arrows so that the arrow point becomes positioned even further to the outside of the bowstring. This will likely cause the arrows to fly a little stiffer, however that’s better than shooting an arrow that does not clear the rest properly.

What If Nothing Works?

While the above will solve clearance problems in the vast majority of cases, sometimes nothing seems to work. In which case, the most important thing to ask yourself is this: is the fletchings’ inability to properly clear the bow having a negative impact on my shooting experience?

Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up trying to fine-tune everything to absolute perfection, and this can make us forget the real reason we’re doing it – so that we can shoot more accurately and have more fun while doing it. There are cases were theory seems to be screaming “This Should Not Work!” but for some reason it does work, and works just fine. So just because you notice smudges on the dry deodorant does not always mean that your accuracy will be affected; if you are consistently shooting tight groups at 30, 40, 50, 60, or whatever other distances you think you should be doing fine at, then it means your bow setup is tuned just fine (though theoreticians will disagree of course :).

If despite all of the above you still feel that you’re not getting the most out of your bow and you strongly believe it is a clearance issue, please leave us a comment below describing the type of tuning you’ve done so far, and we’ll do our best to help (we monitor comments daily).