Bow Tuning

Tuning your bow to your arrows will make a big difference to your shooting. While some shoot well with an untuned bow, you will be surprised what improvement can be made to your groupings by spending some time tuning your bow and ensuring you have matched your arrows to your bow correctly - (and listen to Ade!). It will improve your scores at any distance but when you get over 40M it's essential!

Les Harris is the unofficial Blue Arrows Bow tuning Guru but most senior archers will be willing to point you in the right direction.

Best to start with some background reading, the Easton Tuning Guide is probably the most useful and easy to understand documents you can start with.  This can be downloaded from the Easton website at http://www.eastonarchery.com/download/Catalogs/Tuning_Guide.pdf. [Please see note below] It may not all makes sense on first pass but will come clearer when others give you the practical advice.

A few simple pointers before you get technical:

  • Does your string run down the centre of your Bow? Having the limbs centred is the first step.
  • Is your brace height correct? Use a gauge to determine if the gap between the string and the button is within the ranges specified by your limb manufacturer.
  • Is your knocking point correct? Again with the gauge, it should be about 6mm above your rest.
  • Is your arrow positioned correctly? Position on a vertical stand, when looking down the string centred on the riser bolts, the knocked arrow should be just outside the string. Move the button out/in accordingly.
  • That’s your basic setup.  For everything else, See Les or read the Easton Tuning Guide!

Normally shooting an unfletched arrow as shown in the Easton Tuning Guide is sufficient to tune your bow. It also includes a number of other more specialist techniques but sometimes focusing on your technique will outweigh the time spent on fine tuning! 

NOTE:  Club members have noted that he Easton Tuning guide is broken on the Easton Website (even the Easton search page returns an error page).  I have temporarily included a reference copy here.  All information is copyright Easton Archery.  A local copy of the Easton Tuning guide can be viewed here.

A secondary guide for the more advanced archer is the Fita Coaching manual which is also referenced here.