A Sixteenth Of An Inch

My Bowtech 82nd Airborne compound bow wasn't shooting the way it should when I first got it and set it up. I don't know what happened to it, but it would not paper tune.

Paper tuning is when you shoot an arrow, be it bare-shafted or fletched, through a sheet of paper, from 8 feet away, to see which way the paper tears. A perfect tear is when you get a single clean hole from a bare shafted arrow, or a single hole with three lines equidistant apart coming off the single hole with a fletched arrow. That's when a bow is tuned. If the hole is not "clean," then the accessories on the bow, or the bow itself, would have to be adjusted. Today, I did just that for four hours.

I checked the timing of the cams and one cam was off by a sixteenth of an inch, so I corrected that. Then I put arrows through the paper tuner again. No good. It was still tearing 1" to the left, meaning that the point of the arrow going through the paper was not the same at the fletched end of the arrow going through it. I kept adjusting the arrow rest, but it was too much. It shouldn't be out so far, so I moved it back to the original position. I tore the whole bow apart from top to bottom. I mean, I took the whole bow apart, checked everything, re-timed the cams and the arrow rest. I did things to the bow that I am not at liberty to say due to this information being proprietary. It was also entrusted to me to be kept secret. Then I shot it through the paper tuner again. Much better. The rest was just off a bit so I moved it a sixteenth of an inch to the right. Bingo! A perfect hole.

Next step: sighting in the bow. I took it back to twenty yards and let the first arrow fly. Off to the left about two inches and an inch low. Adjust the sight over to the left a sixteenth of an inch and down a sixteenth of an inch. Let another arrow fly. Okay, arrow is to the left by about an inch but elevation is good. Adjusted the sight over to the left another sixteenth of an inch and let another arrow fly. Bullseye! Sent two more arrows downrange and two more bullseyes. I locked everything down and tightened everything up on the bow. She's tuned. I'll have to get her sighted in at 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 yards on Saturday so we'll be ready to compete at my archery club's fundraiser on Sunday to benefit St. Jude's Children's Hospital. There'll be no losers at this competition; everybody wins!

Archery is one of my zens. When I'm out there shooting, everything gets tuned out. I focus on nothing else but the bullseye. It is the difference between breaking the line in the ten ring or missing it altogether and all it takes is a sixteenth of an inch.