It was a little bit of a long shot but Alissa was headed for Winnipeg last week and Winnipeg has a Cabela’s. Like the good woman she is she trundled off looking to see if they have an EZE-Center laser for tuning bows. They aren’t available anywhere in Canada that I can find but Cabela’s in the US carries them so we thought we’d take a chance. She did a fabulous job in spite of the fact that Cabela’s in Canada doesn’t have them. She smiled sweetly at the Cabela’s staff member and he sent her off to a store called Heights Archery Range and Proshop. He didn’t carry them either but happened to have a used one in the back that he sold her for a sweet price. So now I have a laser tuning tool.
Now that I’m starting to fiddle with my own set up I decided that I needed a place to do it. Off to the “man cave” I went.
As you can see The man cave has a problem. It’s a full of crap cave. It has fabulous potential. It’s heated and large. My father ran a motorcycle shop here for years and this was the repair area. So I’ve embarked on a clean up and organization campaign but it will take a while. I managed to get enough sorted out that I can get at the work benches. It won’t be considered a success until the boat trailer/storage bench is out and safely living elsewhere.
The next task I needed was to get a bow vice. The best priced ones I could find were all at least $100. I have lots of tools and gadgets and was hoping to come up with something useful and inexpensive when I tripped over the perfect thing at Canadian Tire.
It’s a small woodworking vice with a rotating head that I have clamped to the bow and a piece of wood that’s clamped in a big metal vice I already had mounted. It worked pretty good. I stuck a string level on it and got it level in both directions and immediately discovered that my arrows weren’t square to the string. I use a QAD Ultra-rest so making some minor adjustments was pretty easy.
I took the site off and strapped the new EZE Center device into the site mounting holes. It was very easy to do with the mounted bolts.
I should probably apologies up front for the quality of the pictures. I used my Blackberry Curve and it’s not exactly the best choice for expert quality shots of this type.
The next step was to line the laser light up to the string in the centre.
I checked the centre by the rest and it looked not to bad but when I turned the head farther I could see it was far from centered.
As you can see it was out quite a bit. I was a little disappointed in myself as I had spent a fair amount of time using a micrometer trying to get everything set up just right. I was feeling pretty cocky until the laser showed me how far out I was.
Out came the tools and another little adjustment of the QAD Ultra-rest and the picture was much better. As you can see the light is in the center where it is supposed to be.
Tomorrow my new shafts come all set to go and hopefully I’ll be dazzled. It’s just as likely I’m not good enough to see a difference. I feel more confident though. I STILL don’t know what to do about scent control and my underwear.
*Note* Got the shafts. Shot the Shafts. Love the Shafts and changes. I have to admit I definitely noticed a difference. I’m completely impressed. Turkey’s beware.
My thanks to Marian at mariandeer.blogspot.com/ and Kari at www.idontwearpinkcamotothewoods.com/ for their help trying to make me more computer literate.
