Thinking about a crossbow have a few questions

[jakeemt]

Hey folks I have been thinking about grabbing and excel vixen for quite awhile now and next season they will be legal for general archery. Now I still plan to rock my recurve for the early part of the season but, a crossbow sounds really nice for the later half with cold weather and big puffy clothes not exactly being conductive to traditional bows and accuracy! However, I wanted to ask a few questions before I pull the trigger if you guys don't mind. So here goes and thanks for listening to the new guy btw.

How do you guys tune your crossbows? I have read a method involving field points and broad heads but, that's mostly it. Are things like Bare shaft tuning or paper tuning even useful for getting your arrows tuned?

Is it ok to use feather fletching with your excels? I have everything set up to fletch them and even chop them from full length feathers. I am kinda partial so will that work? and if so is offset, helical, or straight your best bet?

Will replacing the string on an Excalibur void the warranty? I build and serve my own strings with all my bows. I have found that with most bows (and I bet the same is true with crossbows) that the string you get from the factory is almost never as good as one you hand crafted. (P.S. I build them from D97 and I have done a fair bit of reading on the details of crossbows string building so I know about tensioning jigs, centering the string on the nock, strand count ect.)

Finally aside from yet another thank you for tolerating my fng questions, does the vixen come with the aluminum rail? I don't see it mentioned on the site and I would prefer that over a synthetic rail.

-Jake

[georgiaboy]

Welcome to the forum!!
The Vixen has the aluminum rail, feather's will work.
Many here build their on strings...will not void your warranty. If your shooting fixed blades the more helical the better.

[xcaliber]

Welcome aboard, good advice there from GB. There is a Vixen for sale here on the Trading Post that is a sweet deal from Wildcatter. Get ahold of him from there quick, it is a great deal!

[deerman41]

You won't find a better deal on a vixen! If you hesitate I may buy it for a back up

[wabi]

With the crossbow there isn't much to worry about as far as tuning. The Vixen is very tolerant as far as arrows are concerned, and will handle a variety of arrows.

Feather fletching is fine. I like a lot of helical for broadheads, but you have to be careful to keep the fletching where it clears the inside of the channel in the rail. Too much helical and/or length can create clearance problems!

The biggest string problems you will find is with serving. If you tension the string when serving and use a good serving you shouldn't have too many problems.

And the rail is aluminum on the Vixen (as already stated).

[nchunterkw]

One thing not mentioned earlier...with crossbows you can't really have too much spine. The stiffer the better. My suggestion would be BEA Executioners or Zombie Slayers. And many on here, including myself find that high FOC arrows (20% - 25%) have very very good accuracy. D97 is a good string material choice and I would suggest getting a jig spool of Angel Majesty 036 serving material from Danny Miller (740-483-2312). It out lasts everything else and seems to resist separation better if you get it on tight enough. With a Vixen, you won't see the serving stress of say a Micro either. I shoot 2" Trueflight Feathers on all my arrows for my Vortex and Micro. When put on with an Arizona EZ Fletch tool (lots of helical) they work great at controlling large fixed blade heads like the RamCat, Slick Trick or Magnus Stinger. If you call up Trueflight, you can get a dozen free samples. Colors will be whatever (look like dye-rejects) but they are properly cut and will let you know if you want to go that route. I have also shot the Rayzr feathers by Gateway and find the TFs to be ground more consistently allowing me to do a better fletch job.

[IroquoisArcher]

Don't know if this is a no brainer or not but they use a flat nock on the bolts for Excalibers. Shop I help at alot of people think a bolt is a bolt and any will work on any crossbow. Wrong nock and you could blow up your crossbow. Also always make sure the bolt is all the way back against the string or again may blow it up. Dad dry fired his I don't know how many times discharging it after the hunt (he didn't know you could use the cocking aid and not have to shoot it) and never has had to replace limbs so they are tuff.

[j.krug]

Looks like most of your questions have been answered so I'll just add a welcome to the forum. A Vixen II would no doubt serve your needs quite nicely.

[Waif]

A string aid /rope allows adding twists to maintain brace height.

It reads like you will get along real well with an Excalibur and see many years out of a Vixen should you choose to do so.

[mr meat]

Welcome!!