Are dowels not for me?

[KyleAllen]

My project for the weekend was dowel arrows. I started off with 3/8 hardwood dowels. Built a taper jig and the whole bit. As i suspected, they were apparently too heavy spine. They kicked up and left at 5 yards....big time. So i start scraping on em to try and get the spine down. After i worked up a good sweat, they still flew like crap. So i go pick up some 5/16 ramin dowels. Cut em, taper em, fletch em , and add nocks and points. Man o man did they look pretty. They were impressively straight. Shot em....under spined. Flew better than the 3/8, but still terrible. Im fletching with 5" high backs. My bow is 58 at 28 and im drawing 30". Am i just out of luck on shooting dowel arrows? The ramins shot fantastic off my buddies bow. He only draws about 27".
Kyle

[bowman_79]

Try making the 3/8 dowel arrows a couple inches longer. cut off a half inch at a time till you get the spine right.

[KyleAllen]

im already cutting them 32" because i over draw before i anchor. But i may have to give that a try.

[shaft slinger]

if you want to weaken the spine chuck them in a drill and sand ONLY the center of the shaft, about a one third of the shaft don.t take much.

[ZaneD]

what i do is get 3/8 dowels and get out the thumb plane (have used regular block plane too) and plane them close to 11/32 and then get them down the rest of the way by chucking em in a drill and spinning through 60 grit sandpaper. They always fly real good, i use a piece of 2x4 with a 11/32 hole in it as a shaft sizer. hope this helps

[Eric Krewson]

You really need a spine tester to see where you are at when you reduce spine on dowel shafts. I have made a bunch of great arrows from poplar dowels by tapering the last 9" to 5/16", the front 9" to 11/32" and sanding the middle to match spine. I started with 75-90# spined dowels and ended up with consistant 55-60# arrows.