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Main Boards => PowWow => Topic started by: streamguy on June 23, 2024, 10:07:20 AM
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I have some beautiful, straight grained tulip poplar boards that I'm considering running through the doweling jig. Before I start, I thought I'd ask if anyone has experience or thoughts about tulip poplar for shafts. There's a lot of nice, straight grained poplar, but I've not seen anyone making arrow shafts from it - maybe there's a reason?
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About 10 years ago several of us travelled down this path together with Poplar. The bolts were cut from dried boards, then stickered and allowed to complete the drying process. The shafts once turned had to be compressed by 1/32" in order to give a surface suitable for various finishes. This was done by chucking them in a drill and spinning through a custom made brass die. Approx 900 were made and they turned out well. If memory serves, finished arrows w/125 grain points ran around 12gpp. The downside was that only a very few of the 900 spined above 55#.
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A friend(Charlie Jefferson) gave me a few dozen he had made a few years ago. The billets he cut and stickered seasoned for at least 2 years before he used a Veritas dowel maker(tenon cutter). They were excellent shafts and the interesting thing was the sapwood made a better shaft than the heartwood. The heartwood(greenish) was more brittle and the sapwood was almost indestructible. He asked me to try to break them under normal shooting and un-normal shooting conditions.The thing is they must be well seasoned and not just dried boards. If you are willing to wait a few years you will really like poplar(tulip, yellow) shafting. If I remember correctly they weighted just over POC weights.
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Thanks! I cut and stickered the boards about 15 years ago, they've been drying/aging in my father's barn. Appreciate the insight on the sapwood.
If they come in light, that's probably ok. I can use them for my wife and daughters bows.
I've made some ash shafts for my heavier bows that I've been happy with. It would be nice to have some lighter spine and lighter mass weight
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Matt, that lumber should make great shafting. I don't think I ever broke one of the ones Charlie sent me no matter what I did. :thumbsup:
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Years ago ,there was someone selling them. They were barreled tapperd, and a darn nice shaft. forgot the name of them
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It was Don Stokes and Dan Quillian.