Hi NDPronghorn,
First up, a big welcome to both you and parashooter for joining the TAC15 owners club. Like you, many of us have put in a little bit of work to perform the basic set-up and tuning steps and have since been amazed at what this crossbow is capable of doing in the right hands.
You asked about how one goes about removing and replacing the factory nocks. The factory nocks are held in place using a fast setting glue. These glues can usually be broken loose but taking a pair of regular pliers and while holding the arrow shaft very tightly with a rubber arrow puller or a rubberized mat, you can rotate the nock with the pliers until it snaps free.
For the record, it doesn't matter how much pressure you use because the nock will either break free or the carbon would break, but I haven't ever seen one break and I've personally done at least a couple of hundred shafts in recent years. On occasion, when I get a real tough one that doesn't want to break free, I wrap a cloth around my shaft and place it in my bench vice. I then carefully tighten the vice to a snug fit and then use my pliers to rotate the nock until it snaps free. When doing this you need to be careful not to tighten the vice to much to avoid the vice damaging your shaft.
Once all nocks have been removed, you will need to soak the back end of your arrows in a 6" tall narrow jar of Acetone for about 15 or 20 minutes. This will completely loosen all vanes, so they can be easily lifted right off the shaft. A second dipping of the shaft should allow you to easily wipe any remaining glue residue from the shaft with a cloth.
Once this has been done, your shafts are clean and ready to be spine tested and marked to identify the stiff side of each arrows spine.
Once the stiff side has been marked in the center of each shaft, this marking needs to be transferred to the nock end of the shaft.
Next, I personally place my new nocks into the arrow shaft about 3/4's of the way in and I align them such that when the nock is on the crossbows string the stiff side marking is in the exact 12:00 position. I do not want to glue my nocks permanently in place yet because I use the glue during the glue in step to adjust the final weight of each arrow. For now positioning the nocks is sufficient to get ready to add new vanes to the arrow, so that my vanes are now positioned in accordance with the position of my nocks.
I much prefer to use the same 3" Dynavane 3D vanes as used by PSE. The biggest difference in my arrows is the "Glue" I use. I've found that either the glue sold by Firenock (AGE9000) or G5 G-Lock Blu-Glu are my two favorites. These glues are so solid that I've never had a single vane come off in almost 3,000 shots. Apply a very thin coat and allow about 5 minutes per vane. If you can apply any extra downward pressure on your jig clamp, it strengthens the bond that's being formed. After each vane is applied, you can use Acetone on either a Q-Tip or a thin cloth to carefully clean any glue residue from the arrow shaft or base of the vane before moving on to the next vane.
After all arrows are finished, let them stand overnight before moving to the next step. This insures the glue is at full strength before going ahead.
I like to add a tiny drop of glue to the front edge and rear edge of each vane to create a ramp. This adds more bonding strength and also eliminates the edge created by the front of the vane. I stand the arrow up for several hours and allow this extra glue to dry.
Next, label each arrow using a white marking pen or any way so that you can see which arrow is which.
For the next step you must own a small electronic gram scale, that can be set to measure in "Grains". These can be found anywhere on the internet and usually cost between $30 and $100. I use one made by Easton that is designed specifically for arrows, but I've been making arrows for over 30 years, so it's paid for itself about 100 times over.
You will weigh each arrow and record its weight next to it's number that I stated you would need to mark on each arrow.
When you finish weighing all arrows you should now identify which arrow is the heaviest in your group of arrows. This will be the arrow you begin with because you can always add additional weight to all other arrows, but it's not possible to reduce the weight of the other shafts.
I use the slowest setting epoxy glue I can obtain. I like the old fashioned epoxy that says to leave it overnight to achieve final strength. The reason for this is because the slower setting adhesives provide the strongest bond strength and also allow the longest working time when installing the nocks.
Starting with your heaviest arrow, you will now add the smallest amount of glue possible and then insert the nock completely into the arrow shaft. Make sure it is aligned with the stiff side shaft marking and then immediately put it on the electronic gram scale and record the weight in grains. You want to record the weight down to the 100th of a grain position. This would be two places after the decimal point (422.XX). The XX representing the 100ths of a grain. If your scale only gos to the tenths column then record it to the tenth of a grain. and write it down next to the arrow number on your paper.
Do the nock on each subsequent arrow in the same manner, except add enough additional glue to either the outside or outside and inside of each nock so that as you weigh the shaft, it remains within (1 - 3) 100ths or tens of a grain of the heaviest shaft and all nocks are aligned to the stiff side marking, so the stiff side remains in the 12:00 o'clock position on each shaft.
Once you insert each nock into the arrow shaft and you weigh it, if the weight is either to light or to heavy compared to the heaviest shaft, just use a pair of pliers and quickly remove it and adjust the weight until each one is as close as possible to the same weight as your heaviest shaft.
By using this process, you are building a set of arrows that are not only spine matched and nock indexed, but they are also weight matched. So this means they will all oscillate in exactly the same direction on every shot and they weigh precisely the same amount as every other arrow in your group.
This cleans up all problems associated with differences in arrow performance from one arrow to another,
Last, keep in mind that your arrow points will never weigh the same as one another. I use my grain scale to weigh out 60 or 70 points in order to get a dozen that when added to each shaft will allow each finished arrow to weigh exactly the same ( + or - ) 1 or 2 100ths of a grain. This way, it makes no difference which arrow I reach for when I'm shooting. Broadheads have a wider spread of weight ms-matches, so I use broadhead washers in three different weights to adjust the final weight. There are plastic washers, Aluminum washers and stainless steel broadhead washers. Different combinations of these will permit you to achieve perfectly matched weight on all shafts.
Regards,
Jon Henry
