Stop Letting Your Peep Rotation Ruin Your Shots – Fix It For Good!

Are you tired of your peep sight just not coming back straight, or maybe you're just learning how to do your own string installs and want to start off in the right direction? In this video, we're going to do a deeper dive into what makes a peep want to twist and things you can do to correct it. Just keep in mind that every Bowtech seems to do things a little bit different, or quite a bit different, but ends up at the same results. So sometimes there's always more than one way to do things, these are just things that seem to work best for me and my personal preference. We're starting off with ideal peep and D-loop alignment. This is when the peep and the D-loop in the string are perfectly straight and in line with each other. If your peep and D-loop are set up just like this, but when you draw back, the peep wants to twist and rotate, that is true peep rotation. I see a lot of bows on the 3D course where the peep is not straight at all. I'm going to move the peep in the string, I want you to pay attention to how little movement it takes to cause that peep to go off of center. So that was about an eighth of an inch, that's about a quarter of an inch, the peep was straight and now it's rotated off to the side. You see this a lot on bows out on the course, if you're set up this way with a straight D-loop and the peep at an angle, of course when you draw it back it's going to have some rotation issues or just not come back straight. Surprisingly, I've seen a lot of times where the peep's just not straight and they take it to a shop and all the shop does is come down and aligns the D-loop with the peep so that every time they go to draw back it straightens everything out as you can see here. Which this is just a band-aid, not only that, but then every time you go to draw it's going to want to twist the D-loop on the center serving which can cause separation and it's just an eyesore to see a bow like this. So why do some string sets just seem to have more peep rotation issues than others? Well to understand this, let's go back to string building process and try to understand some basics. So here we have a factory string that was removed off of a bow, every string builder has an entirely different process from how they do the layup, how they stretch, how they twist. This string here has a specific twist ratio, so that's the amount of total twists that were added into the string. So we're going to do a little test, I want you guys to keep your eye on this D-loop right here which is pointed straight down, I'm going to go all the way up to 400 lbs, I already tested this one, it should not move. Okay so we're at 100 lbs, 200 lbs, 300 lbs, 400 lbs and the D-loop stayed perfectly straight. Alright now we're going to add only one twist to this string to simulate you tuning or adding your peep and wanting to make it straight and we're going to see what that D-loop does. Alright so let's add one twist and now we're going to try to bring it up to 400 lbs, you can already see the rotation in that. That is a night and day difference with just one twist. So you could have got this string put on your bow, if the peep sight was in the correct location it would have come back straight, now if you would have just added one twist to the string to try to correct it, your peep sight would then be all over the place. So all that to say it's crazy to know that just adding or removing a twist or two into the string can really change the amount of rotation that you see in that string and also a string builder definitely knows if you're going to run into any rotation issues by the time they're taking the string off and packaging it up to send to you guys. If you guys could do me one favor, if you find anything in this video helpful or interesting at all, please subscribe to the channel, it will really help me out. If your string is already installed on the bow and you're having some of these rotation issues and you don't work on your own equipment, definitely take it to a shop, don't let them get away with forcing the D-loop in line with the peep sight so that it comes back straight, we already talked about the issues that can cause, in some scenarios they can just move your peep up or down a sixteenth of an inch, an eighth of an inch, a little bit goes a long way where it's still comfortable for you to shoot the bow, in some cases they can add or remove a half a twist, that can make a big difference, once they get that peep straight, I highly recommend them cutting the D-loop off and redoing it and your soft knots, making it nice and clean and not too tight so that it's causing any separation issues on the center serving, which can cause it to rotate around, a host of other issues, and also once you get the peep sight straight and the D-loop straight and you're drawing it back, if you're still having issues, reach out to the manufacturer, I know a lot of string builders, myself included, offer a warranty for peep rotation, so it's something that you guys don't have to struggle with, another thing you want to watch out for is some shops will try to put these rubber string silencers into the string and when they move it up and down it causes this peep to move to the desired location, whenever possible we want to try to avoid introducing foreign objects into the string, especially these heavier, thicker ones, these rubber ones, they'll dry rot, they can move up and down, they can cause unneeded stress to the string because they're thicker, so they can add pressure to it, plus adding weight in certain parts of the string isn't a good idea because these speed knocks go through a lot of testing to find the exact desired locations and weights, so adding something like this is not good, sometimes you'll see people use this D-loop material, it's much more preferred over the thicker rubber silencers, it's thin, it doesn't really cause stress to the string, these won't really dry rot, this is a good idea for when a half a twist in or out is a little too much, you can get away with putting these and moving it up and down and it will cause your peep to micro-tune exactly where you want it, so I would say this isn't a bad idea, although I never use these, and these rubber ones are just all around a horrible idea, so stay away from these. Something else to note is the outside length and diameter differences in some of these peep sights, the standard Hunter one right here you can see is about a third the length and about a half the diameter of this one, these act like a lever, so if there's any little micro-movements in that string, this one's going to be so much more forgiving, you might not notice it, whereas this longer one you can see is going to have a lot more contact surface area with the string, and it's going to act like a lever, and it's really going to magnify some of those movements. Also to note, with this having such a larger outside diameter, it's going to cause a lot more pressure on the sides of the strings, when you have each half of the string on either side of this peep, once it's under load, it's going to cause a lot more pressure on the peep on either side of this, and that can cause some rotation issues as well. I'm going to install a new bowstring, and then I'm going to show you my process for making sure the peep sight is straight out of the gate, and one of the first tips I like to do is get a measurement right between the very center of the peep sight, the very center of the D-loop, which in this case is 6 5 8ths, and I'm going to write that measurement down for once I get the new string installed. I got the string installed, I got the arrow leveled, soft knots are done, I didn't do it too tight, I've got my D-loop put on, I haven't tightened it yet, a lot of people take their knock pliers, and they'll really stretch it out and tighten the crap out of that D-loop, I just use this back side hook, and I wiggle it up, sometimes I'll even take an allen wrench, you don't want this too tight, you get it too tight, it can really bite down into the center serving, separate the center serving, start slipping around, you try to draw the peep back, and it's kind of all over the place, because this doesn't sit good, you can have all kinds of other issues, so we don't want it super tight, when we go to put it in a draw board, and draw it back, and check the timing, draw weight, draw length, all that, it's also going to apply a little more pressure, and kind of naturally tighten it down, that's what we want, so I'm going to check the timing, and then I'm going to walk you guys through my next set up steps. The new string set is installed, D-loop's on, it's not cranked down too tight, I've already did my adjustments, I've already got my timing set, if you noticed, we still don't have a peep sight in, that's intentional, that's the last thing we do, so what we're going to do is shoot 5 or 6 shots, I know a lot of shops tell you to shoot 100 or 200, so they can make sure the peep's not going to settle, we only do 5, we stretch ours on a cycle bot, so it's basically like shooting your bow a bunch of times under a whole lot more pressure than you would normally see on your bow, and the reason for the 5 or 6 shots is, strings have a memory, so here's a string that we bent to put inside of a package, once you get your string and you take it out of the package, you can see it's still bent, it's keeping the shape, so what we're doing once we put it on the bow, is we're doing 5 or 6 shots, so the strings can fit into the cam grooves and the rollers and the bends, they can conform to this bow, and then we're going to put the peep sight in and it's not going to move. String is installed, we did our 5 shots, here's that peep separator, I remember the number from earlier, center of the peep to center of the D loop was 6 5 8ths, so we're going to move that peep separator up to 6 5 8ths right there, now we can split the bundle right there, get the peep sight in, we want to be careful to make sure all the strands are seated properly so we're not breaking any, make sure we're at 6 5 8ths again, alright that peep, you probably can't see it, but it's angled this way a little bit, we're going to do a half a twist into the string to straighten that out, now that's perfectly straight, introducing the peep into the string did cause the D loop to rotate a little bit that way, that's another reason why we don't want to crank it down super tight, because we're going to have to re-straighten it out, and now at this point both of my peep sight and my D loop is perfectly straight in the string aligned with each other, so I'm just going to wrap a little bit of serving to hold this tight into place, we're going to draw it back in the draw board to show you guys how straight it comes back, I hope this is a good enough angle for you guys to see how straight this peep sight is, and this draw board, and we're going to draw it back, and as you can see this peep sight just stays aligned the entire time, all the way back, that's exactly what we want to see, all the way in, all the way out, perfectly straight, that is exactly what we want right there. That's my process for how I align my peep and D loop, and keep everything straight, how I set the string up to have everything straight right out of the gate, I tried to include as much information as I could, I'm sure there's things I'm missing, and again I'm sure you know somebody that does it completely different, and that's fine, but if there's anything I missed or anything you need me to elaborate more on, please let me know down below, and thank you guys again so much for watching this video.