Can you shoot the difference in straightness tolerances?

[Kirkll]

Once you get a spine tester set up, grab the arrows out of your quiver and test them all with the cock feather in the same location…. I think you will be amazed at the different spine readings.   

When I did this the first time I ended up stripping down my shafts and re fletching 9 out of a dozen shafts, and used 3 of them for tomato stakes….my groups went from 3” to busting knocks….

[Gdpolk]

No

Like Kirkll, I spend a lot of time building mine for consistency.  In my experience the spine is the most important spec.  Overall weight is the second.  Straightness is third. 

When I build carbons I typically cull 1/3 or so of the shafts due to inconsistent spine readings or turn them into flu-flus with Judo points for stumping in thickets and loosing.  After that I weigh shafts and points/inserts/footings and actually pair certain points with certain shafts to make the overall weights as close as possible.  I opt for 0.003" shafts unless there is a straighter option in the line that I'm buying but that's really only for my own mental satisfaction of knowing that I did whatever I could.

[Arctic Hunter]

Thanks for all the feedback. Based on what that Olympic shooter said and anecdotal evidence, I’m pretty confident it’s not a huge factor. At least between .001 and .003 shafts.

I went ahead and built a spine tester yesterday out of scrap wood, an old pine ridge arrow spinner, and cheap dial indicator from harbor freight. It was pretty janky, but did seem to show the stiff side of the shafts. I was able to confirm that the victory shafts I tested did have the spine alignment mark pretty close to where I showed it. If anyone was curious…

I plan to build something that works a little better so I can better see the actual spine deflection.