Back To Basics: Pressure Button Setup

In this article we are going to look at what a pressure button is, why it is important and also how to set one up.

What is a pressure button?

A pressure is a piece of equipment that is normally made from an aluminium housing with a spring or magnet with a Teflon tip to help stop the arrowing wearing the end down.

The pressure button allows the archer to set the centre shot of the bow, without a pressure button unless you pad out the rest the arrow will not be aligned correctly, this can result in the arrow shooting off to the left or right and can also lead to the arrow contacting the rest or riser resulting is very poor groupings.

Setup

When installing the pressure button most risers will have two holes on the side to insert the pressure button into, the furthest hole away from the archer is generally avoided because it can lead to a critical setup.

If excessive pressure is applied to the grip it will result in the bow being torqued, because the pivot point has moved forward the arrow is affected more by the increased torque which results in a more critical setup.

It is vital to make sure your centre shot is set up correctly, otherwise you can have poor arrow flight and contact issues. We are looking for the arrow to leave the theoretical centre of the bow.

The most effective way to set the centre shot is by using a pressure button, to do this you need to loosen the grub screw on the collar (picture D), then tighten or loosen the collar itself so that it can move inwards or outwards.

We are looking for the end result to look like the diagram below for a right-handed archer. The string should line up along the right-hand side of the arrow if you are right-handed, or the left side if you are left-handed.

If you are shooting very skinny arrows, the string can be centred down the middle of the arrow.

Tension

The next step is to see if the pressure button needs any alteration to it’s tension, if the bow is setup up correctly and the arrows are going to the left if the archer is right handed you will want to decrease button tension.

To do this you will want to loosen the grub screw (Picture B) then insert an allen key in the end of the button (picture A) and turn the key anti clockwise, this will decrease the tension which will in turn bring the arrows in from the left to the right. If the arrows are going to the right you can increase the tension which will push them out to the left, reverse the steps if you are a left handed archer. Any adjustments made will effect a bareshaft arrow much more than a fletched arrow as a side note.

The button in an ideal world will be set with a medium tension so that you have these adjustments to fine tune your setup, if the tension is set either extremely hard or very soft there could some under laying issues.

Maintenance

There is not a lot that needs to be maintained with a button, always make sure that all of the grubs screws are tight and none of them have come loose. It is worth from time to time opening up and checking to make sure no dirt or foreign objects have worked their way into the internals.

To check this it is very straight forward, loosen of grub screw C then you can turn the top half of the button anti clockwise and it will come off. Inside each button is different but generally inside the button there will be a washer at top a string/magnet and the plunger itself, when everything is cleaned insert the components back in order and note that on the DX button the spring inside is tapered and you want the thinner end at the bottom near the plunger.