Best Wood for Arrows

[Savage]

What is the Best wood for arrows? Bamboo, Cedar, Spruce, Birch or Fir? Or any others.

[Pat B]

There are many good arrow woods. Which is best is hard to say. Each has it's pluses and minuses. The most durable of the ones you listed would be boo.

[George Tsoukalas]

Well, I handplane my own shafts. If I could get PO cedar boards I'd use them. As it is I use white pine and poplar now. D fir is good too. Jawge

[Savage]

Durability is a big plus for me.

[PEARL DRUMS]

My last few batches were Spruce, I like them as much as POC. It really doesnt matter, if you decide to start building arrows you will end up trying everything you can get your hands on anyhow!

[CaptainJ]

Originally posted by Savage:
What is the Best wood for arrows?

Good grief. That question will start a fight at most archery hangouts!      

Everybody will have their own preference on this one.
My favorites are:
Bamboo or cane -I just love the way they fly and they are very forgiving with spine.
Spruce -has been more durable for me than cedar. If you foot them with hardwood and reinforce self nocks on them they are almost indestructible.
Ash is great if you're shooting a heavy bow. -Very durable but heavy.
Hardwood shoots may be the ultimate in durability and have a natural taper and good weight FOC.

What spine will you need? Maybe we should do an arrow swap here so we can all try out a variety of arrow builds and materials!

CJ

[Savage]

Lets pretend I know nothing about arrows or spine. Which I don't. I am thinking more along the lines of building them for several different weight and draw length bows, all recurves. Not sure what you're talking about when you say "hardwood shoots".

Do they make a glue on adapter or something so you can switch out the points or are you limited to gluing them on?

[Pat B]

Cane is very spine tolerant and makes as tough an arrow as you will shoot. I shoot the same arrows from bows 45# to 60#. The natural taper of the shafts will reduce the effective spine weight by as much as 10# and by adding length you can reduce the effective spine by 5# per inch over 28".

[CaptainJ]

Hardwood shoots are just itty bitty baby trees.
See:
 George\\'s Shoots  
and:
 Red Osier Arrows  

When you taper the shaft for the points you can use hot-glue to fasten them with and swap them with heat. It's very quick and easy. I just keep a pocket torch with me and switching from broad-head to target to judos or  whatever is no problem.

If you're building for many different bow weights, your'e best off buying shafts from a supplier. they will sell them already spined and some will even cut them to your specs if you want, but cutting is pretty easy.

CJ

[CaptainJ]

Oh and the How-To section of the forums has some arrow building threads. This one looks good:

   Arrow Building

CJ