When I built em I weighed out 2 dozen 18" and sorted them in groups within .1 grains of each other. After sorting 6 arrows, I then tried a tip from a guy on another forum that knows his arrow's, and @ 20 yards fired them bare shaft as they were already spine indexed from Jerry just not spine or weight matched. I did this slightly rotating each way from spine dead up, after a few shots I found where each shot closest to the same point the majority did without rotating those slightly. Then after getting all six hitting as close to the same hole as I could by rotating slightly and remarking them, I put them together using Blazers w/about a 1% offset, and I weight matched 6 - 87 grain brass glue in inserts, squared and beveled each end of the shaft inside and out, and used plastic flat knocks, w/125 grain combination tips. Total weight was 388 grains. After finishing them I shot them all at 30 yards, and had 4 that were exact same hole over and over again, and 2 that were close just not perfect, marked with two black dots, then one of the perfect ones bit the dust when I shot a second shot at 40 yards offhand one day,,, split the rear losing the nock,,,,
They are dead on at 30 yrds, shoot quite good, but I never tried em for absolute accuracy past that,,,till yesterday, and are shooting 359 fps. av. w/ .8 fps ES. for 10 shots. Giving me 111 lb. ft. K.E. and of course zero Standard deviation,,,Not quite the energy I get with the heavier Zombies that are lighted for hunting @ 120 lb ft ke, but plenty for any animal on this continent of I wanted to hunt with them. Below is what they typically do at 30 yrd. I had to go for the liver letters for one of my shots as I learned already you don't shoot these arrow at the same place twice, as the one I ruined proved,,,,,even off hand.
I have shot em quite a bit offhand and was happy with them, and considering the price, delighted. But yesterday I sat my target up in the morning @ 50 yards, to see just how good I could make these less than $3.00 a dozen splinters shoot?
I took one shot off the rest at the deer vitals, and drilled it with the 50 yard aiming point, same sight setting I had since sighting in with the 18" Zombies for hunting in November. They shoot 345 fps. and weight 455 grn. I don't get the same scope settings but it proves 15 fps is meaningless at this range. So I decided to test em with one shot at each 1 1/2" bulls above the deer on my Black Jack Target. I was quite pleased, and think my efforts played off pretty good, as they may not out shoot those expensive Zombie Slayers, but come darned close to equaling them.
I don't understand how the 14 fps faster arrow is slightly lower that the slower heavier Zombies, but either one will put the arrow inside the 1 1/2" bull when I do my part, and actually as close as I figure, if this was a group it would be somewhere under 1/2" not bad for 3 buck a dozen splinters,,,,,,
I have a dozen 16.5" splinters waiting to get the Micro back together and we will see if the same treatment from those will come close to what the 380 Mad Max will do,,,,, some say the Micro is more accurate, if it is I don't know how,,, but I am going to find out. of those splinters are built with SK-300 vains and 55 grn LNL inserts so I can try 86 grn. glu ins if I want and the other 6 are built with 2" Blazers and 86 grain inserts,,,, they sure are tiny, I just hope there deadly,,,,,,,accurate!
To me it's worth the time, even if others think it's a waste, I'm convinced bare shaft tuning helps even spine indexed arrow that are not matched, I don't know if I would get the same results if I had them spine matched, but I will be finding out the next time I buy matched arrows!!!
