bare shaft tuning shoots

[staveshaver]

I have been working on dogwood and privet shoots ,so far they are sanded ,straightend, and have self nocks .I shot them today to see how they fly from my flatbow ,and kind of primitively spine test them .Surprisingly 14 out of 18 of them had a very straight flight path @ 25'. This is with no fletching or point of any kind. My question is how much will a point and heat treating effect the spine and performance of those that flew well ?and is heat treating necessary ? Thanks

[Kegan]

Points will affect flight, but it should be in a good way. At 25' you can't relaly tell just how well matched the arrows are to the specific bow. 20 yards is about the right distance, though 10-15 yards will usually suffice if you have enough feathering on the back end. I don't know about heat treating though?

[Little John]

The way I was taught was to shoot at ten yards with your point but with out fletching If they hit straight into the target they will only do better with fletching. If the nocks leans to the left the shaft is spined light  to the right too stiff and this is for a right hand shooter.  Spine can be tweaked with longer or shorter arrows or lighter or heavier points.      Kenneth

[Pappy]

That is the way I was taught also like Kenneth. You can also increase and decrease point weight to adjust the spine,heaver point will decrease the spine and lighter point will increase. 
   Pappy

[mullet]

  You can also increase the length of the shaft. I shoot longer shafts,33" and can shoot them out of different weight bows with good results.

[JackCrafty]

Point weight and heat treating will not affect the flight path very much....and you don't need to heat treat unless you are shooting bamboo or something that responds well to heat treating.  In my experience with privet shoots, excessive heat makes them brittle.

I shoot at very close range, 10 feet, when I bareshaft my arrows.  I'm surprised that yours flew well out to 25 feet.  Usually, the wind plays a big factor in how the unfletched arrows fly and if you shoot at a closer target you can get rid of the effects of wind.

One question:  did you plane the shoots down so that they are parallel sided?  If not, did you shoot with the heavy end forward?  They will shoot better with the heavy end forward....which could explain why they had such a straight flight path.

[staveshaver]

Thanks for all the feed back fellas. Jackcrafty; no I didn't plane the shoots , and yes I shoot with the heavy end forward. so far I've debarked , straightened , sanded , and cut self nocks, and burnished about half of them. I was also surprised at how well they flew ,I shot each shaft at least three times before I marked it good or bad . out of the 18 shafts I figured I'd be lucky to get 6 that flew well , but 14 of them passed the test. I only have turkey feathers for 11 though.thanks for the advice about heat treating I will omit that step.Now I have to decide what kind of points to put on them, probably half flu-flus and half broadheads.I would love to post pics of my bows and these shoots but I cant seem to find info on how to do it .

[Kegan]

I'd make flu flus out of those four ones that didn't fly properly. Feathers make everything alright (even with arrow match up)