spin wings stiffen arrows?

[Timid Toad]

Hi everyone
Been going round in circles over whether spin wings effectively stiffen or weaken arrows. Now I'm thoroughly confused. I've only shot EP16s until now, but my arrows are a little weak, so I thought I could leave my points alone, and fletch with spin wings. My thinking was that the lighter weight would make the arrows shoot a little stiffer. However, my larger half reckons it makes them weaker because the rear end of the shaft is lighter and therefore is pushing harder to overtake the points, as it were.
Which way round is it? Put this idiot out of her misery, please!

[Shirt]

Mass at the back of the arrow generally stiffens it. However, fletching is a negligible difference, so shoot whatever you like and if you need to make the arrow stiffer get lighter points.

[Timid Toad]

Thats great, but in that case, what is the advantage of spins over ordinary vanes? They seem to be more fragile and fall off/tear more easily. I see lots of people shooting with them in a terrible state, so there has to be some benefit?

[WhitehartFB]

Spin wings will weaken the arrow less weight at the rear of the shaft but to mortals like me who are not GMB not sure you would really notice the difference.

Quik Spins are 3 times heavier than EP vanes like for like so they might be more noticable?

Originally Posted by Timid Toad

Hi everyone
Been going round in circles over whether spin wings effectively stiffen or weaken arrows. Now I'm thoroughly confused. I've only shot EP16s until now, but my arrows are a little weak, so I thought I could leave my points alone, and fletch with spin wings. My thinking was that the lighter weight would make the arrows shoot a little stiffer. However, my larger half reckons it makes them weaker because the rear end of the shaft is lighter and therefore is pushing harder to overtake the points, as it were.
Which way round is it? Put this idiot out of her misery, please!

Your larger half is right. However a weak arrow is not easy to correct by messing with fletches on there own, they are too light to make any real difference. The best way is by adjusting bow weight, try winding a few lb's off your bow, fitting a heaver string, nock points etc. You will lose a bit of performance from the bow, but may be worth it if your arrows tune better. Alternativly cut them a bit shorter if you can.

[Eolla]

Leave your fletches unless you really want to use use Spin Wings (oh BTW the Kurly vanes I find are hardier than spinnies). If your arrows a bit weak, then decrease bow poundage, or put a brass nockset on your string (or 2), this will stiffen up your arrow (actually it will cause the arrow to react as if it is stiffer...)

[Eolla]

Wow, looks like RGSPHOTO and I were typing the same answer at the same time

[Rik]

Originally Posted by Timid Toad

Thats great, but in that case, what is the advantage of spins over ordinary vanes? They seem to be more fragile and fall off/tear more easily. I see lots of people shooting with them in a terrible state, so there has to be some benefit?

Okay, some observations.
Spin wings are more robust than rubber vanes. They'll take damage which will cause a rubber vane to distort or fall off, and still be shootable. Shoot a Spinwing through a target and it folds up, but will be ready to shoot again within seconds (with the quick application of a thumbnail to straighten it out). Anything likely to tear a Spinwing, would also destroy a rubber fletch...
But being robust, they tend to end up getting used in a worse state than rubber vanes. They take it, and carry on.

Scuttlebutt has it that Spinwings will still shoot well, even when damaged, which isn't true of rubber vanes. But I don't have verification of that...

Originally Posted by Rik

Okay, some observations.
Spin wings are more robust than rubber vanes. They'll take damage which will cause a rubber vane to distort or fall off, and still be shootable. Shoot a Spinwing through a target and it folds up, but will be ready to shoot again within seconds (with the quick application of a thumbnail to straighten it out). Anything likely to tear a Spinwing, would also destroy a rubber fletch...
But being robust, they tend to end up getting used in a worse state than rubber vanes. They take it, and carry on.

Scuttlebutt has it that Spinwings will still shoot well, even when damaged, which isn't true of rubber vanes. But I don't have verification of that...

Interesting stuff Rik, but in reality having used just about every vane, wing or whatever, spin wings are way down my list when it comes to durability. The EP vane is just simple and easy. I have found steaming them over a kettle gets em back in shape OK. Tatty looking Sping wings look awfull and I ended up replacing them just because they looked crap. I'v also seen some compound archer miss with badly damaged sping wings.

If I had to use stick on spin vanes, I found the K-vane to be far, far better to fit and they kept there profile very well, and were dead easy to replace on the field.

[Random_guy]

Early on this year i tried kurlys, then spin-wings, then plasti-fletch, and i have to say i found plasti-fletch to be the most durable. Kurlys seemed to tear if you breathed to heavily near them, spin-wings were better but i still shreded them every so often. Many of my current plasti-fletches have been through bosses, (before we got the new ones naturally! ) burried fairly deep in grass and many things besides and are still fine to shoot. I find the glue that i stick them on with to be the weakest bit about them and now i have decent glue even that isn't letting them down.

That said i know lots of people who shoot spin-wings and don't have to re-fletch 'THAT' often....

As to stiffening or weakening the shaft, there are number of threads on here which explain about adding/ taking off weight and the change it has on the way the arrow shoots (some of them contradictory). How much too weak are your arrows?