Bow Maintenance Schedule: What to Check and When

Bows fail slowly and then suddenly. Almost every catastrophic failure gives warning first: a fuzzing string, a serving that has crept, a limb bolt that has backed out, a splinter in a limb edge. Maintenance is mostly the discipline of looking at those things on a schedule rather than noticing them after something breaks.

The schedule

Every session: the two minute check

Before you shoot, run the string through your fingers and look at it in good light. You are looking for fuzz that has gone beyond cosmetic, any broken strand, and gaps in the serving where the underlying string shows through. Serving separation at the cam or at the nocking point is a common and under-noticed problem, and it changes tune before it becomes a safety issue.

Then check your arrows. Flex each carbon shaft in an arc away from your face and listen for cracking or creaking. Run a cotton ball along the length: it catches on splinters your eye misses. Check that nocks are not cracked and that inserts have not loosened. This matters more than it sounds.

Safety: a cracked carbon arrow can shatter on release and drive fragments through the bow hand. Discard any shaft that creaks, shows a splinter, or has been hit by another arrow. Never shoot an arrow you are unsure about, and never shoot an arrow lighter than 5 grains per pound of draw weight. Both mistakes damage bows and injure people.

Waxing the string properly

Apply string wax to the strands, not to the served sections. Serving is meant to be tight and smooth, and wax works its way underneath it and softens the bond. Rub the wax in with your fingers or a small piece of leather until you feel heat, which is what drives it into the strands rather than leaving it sitting on top. Wipe off the excess.

Excess wax attracts grit, and grit is abrasive, which is why an over-waxed string can wear faster than a properly waxed one. If the string feels sticky and picks up dust, you have used too much.

Hardware: the checks that prevent mystery accuracy loss

Once a month, go over every fastener with the correct Allen wrench. Rest mounting bolt, sight bracket bolts, sight housing, quiver bracket, stabilizer, and the limb bolts. Do not overtighten: snug and secure, not maximum torque, because stripping an accessory hole in an aluminium riser is an expensive repair.

A rest that has crept a thirty-second of an inch produces exactly the symptom of an untuned bow, which is why marking your rest and sight positions with a paint pen is worth the two minutes. Once marked, a shift is visible without measuring. If something has moved, re-verify with paper tuning rather than just putting it back by eye.

Measuring for string creep

Strings and cables stretch, most sharply in the first few hundred shots and then gradually forever. Measure axle-to-axle length and brace height against the numbers on the bow's spec sticker each quarter. A drift of more than about an eighth of an inch means the string set has crept, which changes draw length, cam timing, peep rotation and your sight marks all at once.

The fix is twisting the string or cables back to spec, which needs a bow press. A new bow or a new string set should be rechecked after roughly 200 shots for exactly this reason, and it is why a bow that shot perfectly last month can suddenly refuse to group.

Limb and cam inspection

At the start of each season, look along the full length of each limb in strong light. Splinters, hairline cracks crossing the grain, lifted laminations and any delamination at the tip are all stop-shooting findings. Run a cotton ball along the limb edges to catch splinters you cannot see.

Check that both limbs are fully seated in their pockets, that the limb bolts are within a quarter turn of one another, and that the cams have no side-to-side play on their axles. Look down the string from behind: significant cam lean is a shop job involving yoke tuning, and it is a common cause of horizontal tears that no rest movement fixes.

What always needs a bow press

String and cable replacement, cam timing adjustment, module changes on some bows, peep sight installation, yoke tuning, and any limb removal. A compound limb holds enormous stored energy even at rest, and improvised pressing methods have caused serious injuries. This is the part of bow ownership worth paying a shop for, and the annual cost is small relative to the equipment.

Related work you can do yourself once the string is off and back on properly includes setting the peep rotation and re-verifying the tune. Both are covered in the peep sight guide and the compound tuning sequence.

Storage and travel

Store the bow dry, at stable temperature, hanging on a rack or laid flat in a case. Vehicles and unheated garages cycle through humidity and heat, which is hard on strings and can affect adhesives in arrows. There is no need to detune a modern compound for storage.

After any flight or any trip where the case left your hands, check zero at 20 yards before you trust it. Two minutes and three arrows. Re-verify your numbers with the kinetic energy calculator if you have changed arrows or points since the last time you shot.