Touring My Home Archery Shop Setup (ElkShape HQ Edition)

Guys it wasn't that long ago where I did not know how to do a single thing on a bow other than shoot it. You can continue to do that if you want but I can promise you when you start working on your own equipment you'll get a better understanding of kind of all the ins and outs of archery, which is like the deepest rabbit hole I've ever found in my life. I'm still learning every day. It wasn't until 2019 where I made the decision to stop taking my bow to my local pro shop and start accumulating some of the gear here at my house and exploring youtube and I'm mentoring by a good friend who lives right there who owns a really awesome archery shop you know I'm talking about and just saying hey man will you just show me how to do this teach me how to do this and so at some point in your archery career if you want to order new strings you got to go down to a pro shop or buy them online they get here and then you're like well I gotta take my bow into the I don't even know how to switch strings out that would be a really good place to start that's where I started so I learned how to switch out strings and I've been working with Matthews for quite a while so like all I know is Matthews but regardless of the brand of bow you should know how to put this thing in a press and replace strings and cables get your peep put back in know how to tie it in and there's several ways to tie a peep in find out which way you like the best know how to tie in a d-loop especially if you need to replace your d-loop or if your d-loop breaks in the field which I've seen happen to people before like you should know how to do the d-loop and which way to the knots face and how to tie the knots and how to do center shot how to tune a bow all that will kind of build on itself over time and you'll start gaining more confidence and if something goes wrong in the field you could probably diagnose it better so I want to show you today really quick kind of my home setup I've been accumulating tools over the last six years I'm still always trying to upgrade certain things but I'll kind of show you what I have and what I think about in my honest opinion so let's start with what you see right here this is baker a baker product and I don't remember the exact name of this one but they have ones that mount to benches I like this one for filming because I can move this stand anywhere and everywhere and I'll keep certain things on it but baker archery products they're out of Idaho they're always green like for right now like I'm putting a new d-loop on this RS and this is something I don't have to put in a press I can do right here and we're good to go I can also do my leveling on this tool so I can rotate up put a string level on and this is for making sure everything's level if you have something off on your bow sight or your whatever and you start shooting longer distances and your arrows start drifting further further one way right or left a lot of times it's like you have something wrong with like your second axis or something so knowing how to level your sight I love this tool because I can get these bubbles pretty much dead center level and then from here I can just move it's just really fast and just like that this bubbles level this bubbles level so this kind of tilts it right or left you can lock it in tight you can work on anything you can tie in a d-loop peep this is a great tool so I've used this a lot it's coming very handy so this is one of like the first tools I would recommend there are other ways besides a baker you could get something like cheap on Amazon that could bolt to a some sort of table and you can hold your bow so that you can work on it just work on your budget to me this is an awesome product um I've yet to meet Butch the guy who owns this but I think I will someday we'll run into him obviously a bow press is one of the biggest purchases that you can make so this is a last chance this is also a last chance you notice this is the easy green well what's the difference in price these will come like this this is the easy press not the easy green it's a little bit more expensive I opted to have this tray to keep all this stuff here this is what I started with it comes with certain fingers you can get a pedal version where you push a pedal and it presses and unpresses this is an old school wheel it's fine it's done it's worked for years this is awesome it gets used a lot but then I upgraded to this thing where it's got the legs it's got the wheels I can slide it out move it around it's pretty slick I would probably recommend this and there are videos on Josh Jones's channel I think he's made one showing how you can take the wheel out and put this nut in for impact driver which makes it way faster and you don't have to get a pedal and I just leave the impact on there the socket size 15 16ths and then you'll see that this is like I think more of a prototype not the finished product I think Podium Archer now has their actual tool on the website that they're delivering but this is kind of what Josh built in the beginning and I think they've refined it but I'm checking my time here so for those that know time is making sure that both cams pull back at the exact same time the dead stops touch the cables at the exact same time if one's advanced over the other especially a lot you'll get a lot of inconsistencies in flight you'll get ups and downs randomly very frustrating and so checking time is super important you can see I have a last chance archery scale in here this is the 3.0 so when I put a bow in here and draw it back it'll tell me how much poundage I'm pulling the holding weight things like that this is a great little attachment that you can put on here and then you can see this white lithium I just kind of grease the skids every once in a while to make sure that this is awesome and then depending on if you're right or left-handed you're going to move this over to this thread if you're left-handed and you can check your time I'll show you that in a second but this has been cool because I can check my time and then just flip it right back up and it's out of the way you can even do a third axis leveling kind of at least get it close so pull get your bow all the way down put a Hamsky Gen 2 on and check your levels get it close and then do the door jam trick or shoot it in out into the range but this has been a great attachment you can see right here how it fits on you can kind of get a close-up but it's just the way he built it he just put right on the top here it's been pretty awesome I have like a little tray over here it's my white lithium grease here's some of the tools we keep having a magnetic tray is such a good idea he'll drop stuff keeps it right there good to go a lighter with a magnet so that you don't run off with it in your pocket and it clicks on their podium string level you absolutely have to have that these are from Easton for tying in your D loops and stretching out the string and stuff like that I need to do that anyways so I can just tilt this down lock it in loop material depend on what you're what you like this is BCY23 for years I was doing 2-4 Joel Turner got me turned on to the 2-3 I do like it a lot better I don't need to beeswax it and I burn a little bit more material when I'm doing these burns but overall I like the stretch of the BCY23 but you want to get some loop material and some serving and you want to figure out what size of serving that will give you the best knock fit and you want to figure out your favorite way to tie in a peep archery is cool there's just a bunch of stuff that you can learn over time pliers I'll stick in I'm gonna stretch this bad boy out I'm gonna give it a little cut cut and burn and then where this tool kind of comes in handy is you can kind of give it the last little oomph I don't want this deal up too much bigger and a tool that I picked up on Amazon that I think is really important for calculating sight tapes measuring D loop lengths in case you want to replace Amazon special man and you can get everything down to the thou you can measure this D loop height and get a reading just in case you want to have the same number you can write it down you can measure the thickness of your serving to however many thousands 1 10 1 15 whatever the number is that's something that I've used a lot on sight tapes as well like if I got a couple sight tape marks and I want to measure it the distance between maybe 20 and 100 it's just I use this a lot so we said string level but this is a hamsky gen 2 you can put right here on a riser if you're trying to get your first access rail adjustment you can also find a really good spot on almost any site to make sure that your second axis and the bubble are paired up with the string and the riser so everything's level and you can even use these for third axis door jam stuff there's a little doodad that goes through here and there's videos out on that so I'm just mentioning this will get used plenty at your home spot some scissors for cutting a sharp knife these guys so we can go here if we want or vertical I typically go vertical put that bad boy in and then I have the same attachment here at the bottom now for those at home especially when you're starting out anytime you put any bow in a draw board I mean if you work at a pro shop you'll see those guys they probably don't put an arrow in but I'm gonna do it just in case it's a brand new d-loop you never know and that's just in case something breaks here and it doesn't dry fire okay so I got it pretty close without this and then I can take my hand so this draw stop is almost touching the cable and I'm just gonna hand tighten it down until it does so that is touching the cable and this draw stop is touching the cable at the same time so the bow is in time which is great looks like our d-loop is holding up pretty good turn this on put it at zero peak weight's about 68 we'll do that again so the peak weight was 70.4 it's kind of nice to know that basic dewalt impact driver it's an amazon purchase getting these attachments head down to your local harbor freight somewhere and just kind of get the threads this will come with that tape measure for measuring all sorts of things when you get a boat absolutely dialed probably burn an inch here but like you want to measure a throat to string get your brace height measure your ata from that axle to axle measure anything and everything your peep height your peep radius when you have a bow dial get all your numbers write it down in case something changes you can always reference back on this side here we have different fingers for different bows one of my buddies has a hoyt or some other we just you can get the different attachments and just pop these in and out these are obviously matthews specific allens beeswax for your serving serving to tie in peeps servings to reserve your center top hat kit for you matthews boys that have bows older than the lift x podium archer makes these micros strongly recommend for fine tuning your wheeling or moving shifting your cam lean one way or the other spot hog makes a laser alignment tool so that you can kind of check your cam lean and check the orientation of everything you can just dot a laser i don't use this as much i think the more technical you are the more sophisticated you are the more this would come in handy but you can get away with this not having this in your lineup i think that's most of my stuff in this tray keep that there that there for hot melt i don't use a torch i just use the heat gun for hot melting components in this is that bcy23 this is bcy2400 and i have you know halo and bcy different serving sizes diameters depending on what i'm trying to do for knock fit extra gen 2 this is kind of a cool tool this is from last chance archery the hs3 you tap a button you pull your bow back you let down it tells you your peak draw weight and your holding weight which is again something you can note you'll need some way to find center shot square tool but this is just things i've invested in over the time aerosol this is the carbon express i really like this saw you have an attachment for your shot back you can cut a lot of arrows really fast the blade is going to be spinning this way so you're going to rotate your arrow opposite you can square your arrows when you're done with the squaring tool like a g5 squaring tool i have some stuff over there that i do you can see i have a ram spine tester we have another device here to test the spine of the arrow the stiff and weak spot we did a video on this this ram products is cool because you can do the same thing kind of measure spine tolerances uh spine around shaft all that kind of stuff and you can even like spin your arrow with this attachment with a broad head on it to check for wobbles really cool another aerosol i have is over here this is mod saw we've done videos on these in the past as well but you can cut square with the mod saw it's really quiet you can hook up a shot back so that you're not getting carbon everywhere and it's very reliable where's my arrow squaring tool y'all know where my arrow squaring tool is basically once you cut it you put it in there and you sand it down to make sure that everything is really flush you want a pine ridge arrow spinner so that you can spin your arrows but this is just kind of like my little man area level all sorts of stuff so i think six years ago i didn't know half this stuff was didn't know how to use it and six years later i'm still learning every day uh so if there's a mentor in your neighborhood or in your local area that's willing man trade services if you have if you know like if you're like a handyman offer to fix something and then look if you're a handyman you can pretty much do work on bows but if you're somebody who just does not very mechanically inclined don't be intimidated start small maybe start by just learning how to put your bow in a press safely and switch out strings and just kind of go from there university youtube is where i learned a lot of stuff mfjj podium archer those guys have been super helpful all the guys in the shop always willing to like teach me and then what you'll learn is there's several different ways to skin a cat and so you're going to kind of over time figure out you know which way you like doing things and eventually there's a point where you'll be able to get a bow completely build it tune it broadhead tune it and maintain it that tune year round separation is in the preparation knowing how to work on your own stuff i think is paramount for a long-term trajectory and it'll give you more confidence in the field you'll have to be you'll be able to bring a bow repair kit with you in the field and you'll know how to use everything and that means not pulling a rod state and being 300 miles from the local bow shop and have something break on your bow and then you have to stop hunting drive 300 miles to the first archery shop to find out that they're closed sunday monday wait for tuesday you still aren't hunting and then show up and hope that you're first in line and that they have somebody there who can help you and have the parts to fix guys so learn this stuff i think it'll be a great way to go on your journey there's some awesome resources out there there's some great places and archery forums facebook groups university youtube there's a ton of resources out there and you'd be surprised how many people are willing to help and there's no such thing as a dumb question learning to work on your bow this is my little pro inside elk shape hq thanks for watching we'll catch on the next one