I was bareshafting an arrow today. It is a .500 spine. I had 175 in front, 30.5 long.  It showed really stiff. I though that was a bit strange. I pull 30' and thought if anything it would be weak.  Well come to find out I had another 75 gr. insert in the shaft. It is the Easton Axis shaft, so I didn't realize it till I pulled the front out.  I went back and shot it with a regular insert and 150 gr. and it shoots almost perfect...

Is there such a thing as showing a false stiffness in the arrow?  Why did it show stiff when it should have been incredibly weak?   Weird... Just wondering if any of you have had any such thing ever happen...  It wasn't a one time thing either, I redid it just to be sure and sure enough. it shows stiff with the extra weight in it???

If you are canting alot and have nock high it looks stiff.

That makes sense.  I don't cant the bow severely, but I'm sure I cant it more than I realize...  As for nock high, that is for sure... I shoot 3 under and it is always 7/8 or 1 '....

Thanks

Steve, Good to see you back to shooting bows!!

I have found that carbons with the hit inserts get stiffer with insert weight because the heavy inserts are longer and go farther into the shaft. A 300 grain head will make an arrow weaker than a 100 grain insert and 200 grain head.   It changes the fulcrom. Ymmv.

Thanks Mike... Been thinking about you latley. HOw are you?

I'm just getting back to shooting a little... Trying to be smart about the elbow issues...

QuoteOriginally posted by PastorSteveHill:
Is there such a thing as showing a false stiffness in the arrow?

Yes.  

If you have an extremely stiff or weak arrow it will give a false reading of the opposite.  It's more common with an arrow that is too stiff though.  It's caused by the arrow being so far off spine that it doesn't clear the shelf when you shoot which makes the arrow do some pretty weird things.

If you had two inserts on the arrow then you effectively shortened your flexible/ working part of the shaft be a few inches. This will give you the stiff reaction you were getting.

Yep noticed the same thing playing around with 2-100gr inserts in my Beman MFX shafts, thought for sure it would reduce spine considerably but I assume the added lenght of the 2 inserts effectively reduced the shaft langth and increased the spine greatly.  Did not work for me very well.

QuoteOriginally posted by gvdocholiday:
If you had two inserts on the arrow then you effectively shortened your flexible/ working part of the shaft be a few inches. This will give you the stiff reaction you were getting.

That's a very good point that I really didn't think of.