Pearly, i am being overly technical in my nock placement advice.
primarily cos i am OCD about detail, ( my wife calls it something else- thats a lot less polite and makes reference to my posterior and my alimentary canal).
the positioning of the nock- may certainly have its origins in self nock building, but i cant comment on that, even though it makes perfect sense.
however from the perspective of a plastic nock and the relative spine of the shaft, i believe it stems from wanting to put the stiffest portion of the shaft against the bow, which is usually the edge grain, as the resilience of the edge grain cut, should, in theory, allow it to recover from paradox marginally quicker.
wood grain shafts are usually tested on an edge grain side-, i guess this is an attempt to find the stiffer side of the shaft. as for the process above!
Also that an average shaft may produce different spines on different quadrants, and if you want a certain spine shaft then its probably best to use that specific section of the shaft where that spine was tested and noted.
so those are the ideas and the theories.
but here are some facts- just to confuse things
1. yes the majority of shafts do test stiffer across the edge grain of a shaft, but i have had many shafts that proved the opposite, by measuring stiffer on the flat grain than the edge grain, and have also had many shafts that measured the same all around the shaft, have also had some that were #5 lighter on the flat as opposed to the edge grain. i have even had shafts measure differently on the two opposite sides of the edge grain.
i guess there is so much going on in a trees life, so many stresses and strains, that we are totally oblivious of.
2. watch the video link below of wooden shafts being shot, its the best video i have ever seen.
now look at about 2.07 on the video-now this fascinates me, and blows all the theory out of the water, IMHO!
see after the shaft starts to rotate- after leaving the string, and it takes a few feet to get up to full rotation, so the shaft is spinning, but the shaft is still oscillating from side to side- not oscillating in all directions relative to the edge grain only.
that tells me that the energy generated during paradox seems to override everything else.
so does it really matter if the spines are different on different facets of the shaft, and how they are orientated on the bow, as they all come into play as soon as it starts to rotate???- I dunno
i think the real point here, for me, is just shoot the damn arrows( i have to keep telling myself this). tune them to shoot out of the bow- paper tune every shaft- make sure it is tuned- treat every shaft as an individual- not as a homogenous whole. even carbon shafts vary this much, as does boo or cane, or shoots, or ali!!
and i think your"malaligned" nocks bear testament to this-we overly analyze( well i do) things- more archers out there, need to be more like folks on here- just build the gear and shoot it and enjoy it!!!
i think primitive man knew this, he built an arrow, if it worked he kept it, I am sure they all had varying foc's, spines, weights etc etc
i know i get overly technical with some of this stuff, it is a passion. However, if things are not working out, one has a technical perspective to try and figure out how to rectify it
besides what am i going to blame next time i miss a deer at 5 yards again, i know its not my shooting 'cos we all know thats perfect- probably was a 3 degree misalignment on my nock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96KGWC0PB6s
