Ultimate ARROW Build

Hello. Gonna go have some fun today? How about these? I'm talking about functional and stylish. That's a two for one, baby. That's a twofer. We even got Josh a fancy coffee today. Josh doesn't leave his house or his range area, but today we're gonna bring him a coffee. Shout out to the coffee girls at that coffee shop. They remembered that I make archery videos. Remembered my coffee order. So that's cool. Louie's into it. He gets a treat every time he goes there. Here, this is for you. Ooh, what you got? You like your coffee like you like your women, right? I'd have to experience it before I could tell ya. Black and sweet? That's good. Black and strong? Mm-hmm. I do like strong coffee. This is true. What'd you get me here? What is this? Just a cold brew. Just plain cold brew? Just a cold brew, straight up. Nothing in it? Straight up with a G-Town. Mm. So it doesn't have like what, almond milk or something like yours probably has in it? Nope. No? Nope. Yeah, I heard you have to get that when your estrogen starts going up or something. Guys, one thing I'm just a little pissed about Josh at is I haven't gotten to weed through all of this ---- because he's given me, he's kind of started me off and right with some of the best recommendations. So I wanted Josh to give you a little perspective as to like, here's what has led him to believe, here's Arrow Building Fundamentals 101 with the guy who's lived in an archery shop for the past 30 years of his life. And not only hunted, but gotten to listen to thousands of hunting stories and experiences and stuff like that. Well, number one, seems like the most successful configuration for an arrow is around 425 to 475 for most people. If you do the math and do the research into it, you're gonna find that's gonna be true for the most part. I have found over the years that as long as I maintain around a 15% FOC percentage, which is why I say that number a lot, my arrows tend to group really well down range and they tend to hit with more forward frontal pressure so they don't deviate as much when they hit something hard. So it's kind of why I stick with that. I like to use helical fletching because it stabilizes broadhead flight, whether it be mechanical broadhead or fixed broadhead, faster it spins, the tighter the grouping. It's relatively common, it's relatively noticeable and if you do shoot and test, you will find that regardless of what some dude on the internet told you, including me. Building arrows and making them uniform is actually pretty easy. I mean, as long as when you cut your arrow, you square the end of your arrow, right? Cut that sucker and then sand the end of it square on a squaring tool and knock end and insert end or whatever you cut, typically the knock end's pretty straight from the factory. Build up your arrows, fletch your arrows. If they're spine aligned, pay attention to your spine line orientation or knock to them if you wanna go that far, which is a whole nother mess of confusion. So I would probably avoid that one unless you're gonna go deep into the weeds and then go right ahead. And from there, once you've built those arrows, do not insert them yet. Find your broadhead, find your insert, take, let's say you're making 12 arrows, lay out your inserts, lay out your broadheads, weigh all of them and sort them and then put the heaviest broadhead with the lightest insert and so on and so forth until you get all of those matched up and then go back and re-weigh each setup and number those and then go back and weigh all your arrows and number those. And once again, put the heaviest arrow with the lightest broadhead insert configuration and vice versa. And if you have decent quality stuff, you're probably gonna be within three tenths of a grain. Now I know that probably sounds a little excessive to some, but if you're shooting a long ways away, a tenth of a grain will make a difference. A grain will definitely make a difference and five grains will make a lot of difference. And all you gotta do is take an extra 20 minutes and weigh the stuff out before you glue it together to make it simple. That's what I would do, but do what you want. And you're an advocate for building your own arrows, working on your own bow. Does that ever concern you that, hey, these people, oh, they don't need me anymore? No. No, you're always gonna need help to some degree. Basically, there's no gatekeeping. We're just trying to give you all the information you need to work on your stuff, build your stuff. It's awesome. More people that know about archery, the more people keep the sport moving forward. Gotta grow. It's the only way we're gonna survive. Get as many people into it as you can and learn as much as you can from me or anybody else for that matter. Just learn and get better. That's how we all will advance. 10-4. Over the course of the past few seasons, I've shot arrows into steel, I've shot arrows through animals, and I've sent a lot of arrows downrange. And I wanted to take you through what's gonna be my number one, my numero uno for 2023 for an arrow setup. Let's bring it in. Let's break it down from top to bottom. We'll go through it. We'll build it. We'll get you all the specs. Go through a few different options of stuff that I found in the trials and tribulations of shooting a lot of these things into a lot of different materials. And fortunately, having a guy like MFJJ, aka Josh Jones, to help kind of guide the process. So let's build some stuff. Let's go shop and let's build some stuff. Now, a couple of things before I get into this arrow build. One, they're expensive. They cost a lot. I did a whole budget video, and I think the regular RIPs are a great budget option. That video will be linked down below if you wanna see it. These cost a lot. And the only downside of... One of the downsides of them costing a lot is the stock inserts will end up bending sooner than other inserts that you put in. So I pull those inserts out right away. So you're only really getting the blanks in my build, and then you're putting your own inserts in. And then on top of the blanks, we're putting extra inserts in. So they end up being relatively costly. Food for thought. Couple additional thoughts on why I like these so much. They have this smooth coating on the outside that is excellent for pulling out of 3D targets. And I imagine it makes it a little easier when they're sliding into stuff. They're just super durable. Like, they're hard to break. Shot them into all sorts of materials, and they hold up well over the course of time. And most importantly, they fly well. They fly true. And I haven't found, at this stage in the game, I'm not capable of out-shooting the arrows. If they're squared up, tuned up, which we're about to do shortly, they fly amazing. Yeah, they've been great that way. And one more quick bit before we get into the build. I haven't found, these are .01s. These are the most expensive ones you can buy. I haven't found the .03s or .06s to fly hardly differently at all. Maybe that's just me or whatever. But again, if you're trying to save a few bucks, go with .03s or .06s. I've always heard that the victories actually can't even make .06s. Like, they come off the line at .03. I don't know if that's true or not, but I found the .06s to fly really, really well. For this purpose, and just saying, hey, we want to build the best arrow we can, I'm sticking with .01s for today. A little shopping here. So the insert of choice is podium archer field points. They flush up to the end of the insert really well. And these little titanium podium insert, outsert, halfsert, check it out. Titanium field point. Basically, because I've already got some arrows built, when I go to cut them, I can just match them up, carbon to carbon, and make sure that I'm cutting the exact same length of my previous arrows. So I'm gonna put my arrow in the saw, line it up, so it's the exact same length on the saw cutting edge, and then we'll get the other one zipped off. Cut it, square it, glue it. Maybe we can mix up a beat out of that. Cut it, square it, glue it. I'm sliding my adjuster down here, so on my carbon cut, I'm right where I need to be right there. Let me show you that really quick. And then I'm gonna put the new arrow in and zip it off, so I know I'm the same length here. Now I'm fixing to take this edge and square it up. One way we can make sure, let me show you this. If you just wanna know, because you wanna know, you need to know, you get a little silver Sharpie around the edge. And then when you grind, we'll make sure that silver Sharpie's gone. That way you know you have a uniform sanding. Check that out. We got it flushed up. Make sure it spins, just as a check and balance. Guys, one quick test we wanna do here is just to make sure everything fits upright and spins right, we'll put an insert in, and then we'll screw in a fuel point. And then let's just make sure everything spins true here. All right, Josh, this is us putting your work to the test here, let's see what we got. And then we'll get it glued in. I've started recently using hot melt, and that just gives me flexibility in case I need to switch it up later or I need to pull an insert. If you wanna use regular super glue, that's cool too. This stuff works well, AAE Max Bond, and then what's this other stuff? Bob Smith Industries, cyanaculate, one of those fancy words Josh always says. I'm gonna hot melt it in though, just to have that flexibility. Now we can glue it and we're fixing to hot glue it. Hot melt it. Guys, if you have any questions about any of this stuff, I'm using the whole ingredient list will be linked down below in the description. It's a lot of stuff, a lot of moving parts, but I'll have it all linked right down there if you wanna check it out. Just like that, we're glued up, and we're gonna take one additional step here that I've already done with my previous arrows, but we're gonna clock it, which basically means I'm gonna put a little sharpie line on here, shoot it into the target from about six, eight feet away. It'll rotate one direction or the other. And typically we've oriented the veins the way the arrow is rotating. It's moving naturally. There's a lot of hearsay if it works, if it doesn't, but it's a simple step that it doesn't take that long to, it doesn't take that long. So clock it, and then we'll orient the veins that way. It's supposed to clock right though. I'm about six feet from the target. Through that fourth finger on my hinge, it's been an absolute game changer for me. Just my shot timing has been way more predictable. I almost made a, I wanted to make a whole video on it, but I'm like, man, I can't bore you for a whole video talking about that. But fourth finger for me just makes it a lot easier to feel the rotation of the release happening. Okay, so that Sharpie mark is vertical, and I can see it kind of cocked to the right. A lot of people say this has to do with the style of string you shoot, and I've definitely seen different stuff with different strings. Traditionally, my bows always clock to the left, but for whatever reason, this string clocks to the right. Can you see that there? Little bit of twist to the right. So all that means for me now is we're going to fletch to the right. We'll get them fletched up. This is everything I've used to fletch. Boning FletchTite, Super Glue, AAE, Mini Max to the right, couple of fletchings. I've just had really good luck shooting these Silent Night SK2s. They're not a huge vane, and they fly pretty dang well. Something Josh actually hates, it's kind of one of his pet peeves, is he doesn't really like a forefletch. He's got a lot of reasons for that. We've done a whole podcast about it, but there's a lot of tournament archers that shoot a forefletch, so part of me, maybe a little bit just to mess with Josh a little bit, kind of wants to build a forevane build eventually. I think when you're going forevane, one of the keys is to keep them small, because I did some testing with a larger forevane configuration, and it really grabbed the wind and dragged a lot more on the longer shots. It didn't necessarily make it more accurate, but it was more affected by the wind and more affected by the drag than the three fletch was. So that's food for thought. But I kind of like a little, maybe, maybe I don't like it, but just to mess with Josh a little bit, maybe a little forevane configuration. Let me know if you think I should build something like that and what vane I would consider. Those tack vanes are pretty sexy. They're also really light, which is big. Yeah, let me know what I'm missing. I'm stewing on that a little bit for the future. Now, traditionally, I've always used an AAE primer pen to wipe these. Today, because I don't have an AAE primer pen handy, all I did was dip a Q-tip in a little bit of rubbing alcohol. Any kind of solution that'll clean the vane, make it a little more adhesive. I know the AAE primer pen's money, but I've had to use alcohol in a pinch in the past. One thing is we're gonna try to align, there's a spine alignment here on the RIPP TKOs, and we're gonna align that for our off-color vane, cock vane, whatever they wanna call it. And if it's not aligned, like I'm pretty aligned right now, but if it's not aligned, you can just twist it. I'm going two whites and an orange on this one. Going to wipe them down. I'm not even positive you have to wipe them down, but I've just always done it because I don't like vanes ripping off and I don't like doing stuff twice. That's done. Now we're just gonna put a couple dabs on each one here. A couple dabs. I like one near the end. I go five dabs on every one. As far as fletching goes, this thing is pretty sweet for time economy. It's not as precise as something like the Bitsenberg. If you really wanna get precise, it's hard to beat some of those other options. Josh has had something in the making for a while, so we should have more and more good options to get our vanes fletched here in the future. But once everything's on, I like to close it up, make sure nothing's off kilter, and then I'll send the spring up after it, put our little cap on, pinches it, get our spring popped, make sure it's all scrunched up, let it sit for 20, 30 seconds, and we should have a vane ready to rip, or an arrow, almost. And then the last step is we're just gonna flex tight it. And that just gives that last little bit of durability to the vanes. Little dab on top and bottom. You'll see what I mean in a second. Pop our cap, push our spring in, peel it back, check our work. Sometimes the very top doesn't quite grab, and I just give it a little push down. Make sure everything's sealed nicely, clean up any excess glue. I don't get a lot of excess when I go five dabs. Okay, and then I'll flex tight both the top and bottom. Just a little dab. It's gonna look like a little more than you would think, and it does dry down. And I've just found with this stuff on, it's so rare that I'll have problems with vanes ever coming detached. And that's it, guys. That's what it looks like. And then I'll let that dry. It actually doesn't take that long to dry, maybe 30 to 60 minutes, something like that. And because we hot glued it, it's pretty much ready to rip. For final check, I'm gonna give it a little spin, make sure everything's kosher. Let's get a little finished arrow weight here. 442, and everything I've shot these things through in the last three years, it zipped through edge to edge with a good amount of energy. Also get you the FOC and the arrow speed coming out of my bow. Here's a snapshot of all of my arrow stats right down to the bottom. Hit the calculate button. Total arrow weight, spot on with what we weighted at. FOC, 18.3%. Let me know what you think about that. So my sweet dog here got her ACL surgery four or five weeks ago. And you can see her little shaved leg here. But she's healing up nicely. Yeah, yeah, it was a lot at first, but she's moving on it pretty good now. Hey, Mia, little girl. We're gonna go find Josh. Hey, we're gonna go find Josh and get a little Crono. Let's go get a little Crono. Let's go get a Crono. The grand finale. A little Cronies, what's your guess? Let's see, what do you got for, you got 70, you got 29 inches, 29 and a half inches? 29 and a half inches. I think I'm 29. 29, okay, and your arrow weight is what? 440. I think it'll be 290. Really? Maybe, 280. I was thinking 280. You got really excited, I probably overshot. I'm thinking 282. Because target bows are a little slower, right? Traditionally, but not necessarily. You gotta go off the specs. If you're like axle to axle, brace heights, aggressive cams, non-aggressive cams, it all plays into it. You like my alignment here? Little short. Oopsies. Yeah, not quite as much as one would hope for. Do we need to juice it a little bit? Give it some juice? If I wanted to juice it, I would switch the, go to performance probably. Are you on comfort? Yeah. Yeah, like stop right now and put it on performance. Or I guess wait till you're done with your tournament and then put it on performance. You'll get 15 feet out of that. 10 to 15, somewhere in there, just 10, it'll vary. Yeah, I didn't know you were on comfort, or I would have guessed a little too many. Well, comfort's nice, dude, because it's fun to shoot. Well, it's nice and fun to shoot, but at the end of the day, you're also looking for energy, velocity, and the ability, see that 273 twice, the D-O-O, D-U-O-1 is duplicate. Okay, 273. That's a wrap on our aero build today. I'm actually on the way to play some pickleball with our friend Drew, who's been on the channel. Anyway, it would mean a lot if you'd subscribe to the channel. I'm chasing up that road to 100,000, and I need all the help I can get. Aero build was fun. Let me know if you want to see something like this again, some variation of it, something else you'd like to see tested. This has just been a really reliable aero for me. It's flown really well, but hey, the journey never stops. I've actually got my bow tournament this weekend. I just got the crazy eyes from a couple gals back there, but get out and shoot your bow, and I'll catch you back for the next one.