I bought this riser for myself March 2025 and I’m writing this about six months later after shooting a good few thousand arrows with it. Overall I like the riser but I can’t help comparing it to the Kinetic riser I bought for my kid at the same time. The Kinetic was, give or take, 2/3 the price and having shot both I can’t tell much of a difference other than the grips and the WNS is heavier.
WNS Tiller Bolt Factory Position
So at this point I’m sorry but I’m going to go off on a bit of a rant. The WNS manual is terrible when it comes to adjusting the weight of the draw via the tiller bolts. Before you jump on me, I know the tiller bolts are for adjusting the tiller not the draw weight but everyone does it and it’s useful while your building up your draw weight.
The problem is the manual says that you’re allowed to turn the bolts +/- 2 turns from the factory position. This is great, but what if you’ve lost the factory position as I managed to do?
Jake Kaminski has a good video on how to find the limits of your tiller bolts. Personally, I think his method for the maximum adjustment is spot on, the minimum adjustment not so much. I suspect the minimum adjustment method could lead to tiller bolts adjusted too far out.
The other decent discussion I found on this topic is here at Archery Talk. Unfortunately, like all the other places where I found this question talked about, there’s a dozen different conflicting (or plain unhelpful) answers. About half way down though someone mentioned 20mm from the underside of the tiller bolt to the pocket and this, combined with Jake Kaminskis video, I think, solved my problem.
Why Is This Important?
The question you should be asking is why this is important at all? A simple answer to that is the manual tells you if you mess this up your bow might self-destruct while in use – you really don’t want that to happen. A better answer is that you’ll likely break or at least damage your equipment with a grossly wrong adjustment. Notice I said grossly wrong, my gut feel is that there’s quite a lot of room for error here.
The Archery Talk thread linked to this article in Japanese that is apparently from a Win&Win employee on this topic. The machine translation isn’t great but it aligns with my thinking on this.
In essence when under draw only the tips of the limb should pressing on the flange of the tiller bolt and the pressure point should be behind the centre line of the bolt.
Following the rule above it is possible to set the maximum in adjustment of the tiller bolt by inserting a limb and then screwing the tiller bolt in until the flange is flush with the face of the limb. Note that you need to pull on the limb as if it was being drawn to properly set the position. The limb being flush with the flange is the maximum acceptable position as under draw it’ll still press on the tips of the limb.
If you adjust the tiller bolt in beyond the flush position the limb will put pressure on the outside corner of the tiller bolt flange. Over time this will likely cause the head of the tiller bolt to shear off. If you are adjusted like this you’ll see crescent moon marks appear on your limbs.
Once you know the maximum position you can wind your tiller bolts out the specified number of turns in the manual to find the minimum position. This is where I disagree with the Jake Kaminski video, I think his method would allow a much lower minimum on most bows.
With a small steel ruler it’s quite possible to measure the maximum in position on the tiller bolts. I measured it at 20mm. The minimum setting was then 25mm. This seems suspiciously like it was designed to be that way and agrees which the few sources I could find.
Update After Three Months
It’s now three months after I set my tiller bolts using the method described above and nothing bad had happened. I was moving up in draw weight quite a bit so I set my tiller bolts to 25mm.
Rest of the Review…
After investigating how to reclaim the factory position on the tiller bolts I realised I didn’t actually have much else to say about this riser. It’s a decent solid choice, not particularly outstanding in anyway. All the fittings seem to have been fitted accurately and well. The finish is well applied and hard wearing. The machining is all accurate and well finished. I like it and I would buy it again but there’s really not that much you can say about a lump of metal.