How to Tune a Recurve Bow: The Six-Step Sequence

Tune a recurve in this order: brace height, nocking point, centershot and plunger, tiller, limb alignment, then bare shaft testing. The sequence matters because each setting builds on the one before it — adjust the plunger before your nocking point is settled and you're tuning a moving target.

You need three things: a bow square, a set of Allen keys, and a couple of bare shafts (arrows with the fletching stripped off or never glued on). The bow square is non-negotiable. It costs less than a tube of fletching glue, and every measurement below depends on it.

Budget an afternoon for the first pass. Re-tuning after that takes twenty minutes.

Start with brace height

Brace height is the distance from the deepest part of the grip to the string, measured with your bow square. The standard ranges by bow length: 62- and 64-inch bows run 7.5 to 8.5 inches, 66- and 68-inch bows run 8 to 9 inches, and 70- to 72-inch bows run 8.75 to 9.5 inches.

You adjust it by twisting the string. Two twists adds roughly a quarter inch; untwisting drops it back down. Work through your bow's range in small steps and listen — the shot gets noticeably quieter and smoother at the sweet spot, usually somewhere in the middle of the range.

If you're several inches outside the range, twisting won't save you. The string is the wrong length. Replace it.

Set the nocking point

Where does the nocking point go? Four millimeters above square is the standard starting position for a split-finger release. Clip the bow square onto the string, rest its arm on the arrow rest, and mark the spot. (Archery mixes units shamelessly — brace height in inches, nocking points in millimeters. You get used to it.)

Tie your nocking point on with serving thread rather than crimping a brass one. Brass nocks work, but they're harsh on tab faces and you can't nudge them half a millimeter at a time. Tied points you can.

The arrow should click on snug below the tie without being pinched. Pinched nocks throw arrows in ways no amount of downstream tuning will fix.

Centershot and the plunger

Nock an arrow and stand behind the bow, lining the string up with the center of the riser. For a right-handed archer, the arrow point should sit just visibly left of the string line — barely peeking out. That slight outside set accounts for how the arrow flexes around the riser at release.

On an ILF riser such as the Hoyt Xceed 2 or the Sanlida Miracle X10, the plunger threads into a bushing above the rest and controls both the centershot position and the spring pressure the arrow flexes against. Set the tension to the middle of its range for now. Fine adjustment comes later, during bare shaft testing.

Shooting a wooden takedown like the Samick Sage off a stick-on rest? Your centershot is fixed. All your horizontal tuning happens through arrow spine and point weight instead — which is exactly where an arrow spine calculator earns its keep.

Tiller

Tiller is the difference between two measurements: the perpendicular distance from the string to the base of the top limb, minus the same measurement at the bottom limb. A bigger gap at the top means positive tiller.

Most split-finger archers run between 0 and 6mm positive, and 5mm is the standard starting figure alongside that 4mm nocking point. Stringwalking barebow? Go neutral — equal top and bottom — because your fingers sit well below the arrow.

Limb bolts control it. Winding one bolt in or out shifts the balance between limbs; winding both equally changes draw weight without touching tiller. Check your riser manual on whether to adjust strung or unstrung — when in doubt, unstring first. Then re-measure brace height, because limb bolt changes move it.

Check limb alignment

Sight down the string from behind the braced bow. It should run dead through the center of both limbs, tip to tip. If the string kicks off to one side at a limb tip, the limbs are misaligned or twisted — and no amount of plunger fiddling will tune around that. Stick-on limb gauges make the deviation much easier to see.

Most modern ILF risers have lateral adjustment built into the limb pockets: loosen, shift, re-check. Wooden takedowns generally have none. If a budget bow shows a genuine limb twist, that's a warranty conversation, not a tuning problem.

Bare shaft tuning ties it all together

Everything above was setup. Bare shaft testing is the actual tune. Shoot three fletched arrows and two bare shafts at 18 meters, aiming every shot identically. Fletching hides flaws; bare shafts expose them.

Read the vertical first. Bare shafts hitting above the fletched group mean your nocking point is too low — move it up. Below the group, move it down. Work in half-millimeter steps until they land level.

Then the horizontal, for a right-handed archer: bare shafts left of the group means the arrow is reacting stiff, right means weak. Stiff — soften the plunger spring. Weak — stiffen it. Go a half-turn at a time, then refine in quarter and eighth turns. If you max out the plunger and the bare shafts still won't come in, the problem is spine, not spring: heavier points weaken the reaction, lighter points stiffen it, and beyond that you need different shafts.

Don't chase perfection. Bare shafts landing inside the fletched group at 18 meters is a tune plenty of club archers never reach. Once you're there, verify at 30 meters if you have the space.

One change at a time

Change one variable, shoot, write it down. That's the whole discipline.

A tuning log sounds tedious right up until your groups fall apart mid-season and you rebuild the setup from notes in ten minutes. Record brace height, tiller, nocking point height, plunger settings, and arrow build every time anything changes.

And keep some perspective. Tuning removes the bow's excuses, not yours — a mid-priced riser tuned carefully will outshoot a flagship tuned badly, and most archers find their scores move more from a cleaner release than from anything on this list.