Where to find good wood for arrows?

[halfseminole]

I've purchased my first band saw, and I'm looking to make myself some footed arrows.  However, I can only buy red oak and poplar here, and most all of that severely warped.  I'm looking to make heavy footed arrows, where would I find appropriate wood to do so?

I have the thumb plane and jig set up to round them myself, and I can make all the shock absorber buttons and such that come on Turkish arrows already.  I just need to know where to get the wood (something hard, I should think) and I'll be on my way.

[rmorris]

Poplar will make great arrows, I buy it at local hardware stores. My advice is to get the wood as strait as possible and the grain running as close to parallel of the edge of the board as possible ( look for quarter sawn boards). I then take a large knife or hatchet and place it about an half inch from the edge of the board and split the board along the grain line. This is your new edge for cutting arrows to prevent runout of an arrow shaft. With your draw you can't afford runout.

If you can also find some tight grain Douglas fir that is easy to spit and make good arrows

Good luck

[macbow]

If you are only looking for the wood for the footings you need to locate a hardwood store.
Woods,like Purple Heart , walnut etc. Make good footings.
Usually a hardwood store will have a "shorts" section where the prices are good.

[Pat B]

Like Ralph said poplar does make great arrows. You could also look for doug fir or spruce at your lumber store or find recycled lumber from salvage yards. Some of that old wood would make excellent arrows. Lots of it would be fir or spruce.

[George Tsoukalas]

Poplar is good as is white pine.
I hand plane from square stock. Choose straight grained, tight grained (if possible) stock, and with no knots. I rip it 7/16"  x 7/16"by 32 inches.
Jawge
 http://georgeandjoni.home.comcast.net/~georgeandjoni/shafts.html

[Eric Krewson]

Last I doweled on my router shaft machine was from a carefully selected very tight ring doug fir board from Lowe's, this as at least ten years ago.

At the time a 48" board cost $6 and I could get 13 shafts from it. The problem was, even from the same board, the spines would be all over the place, from 35 to 75.

[KenH]

You can get all sorts of shorter pieces for footing arrows from ****, but you'll have to buy planks and rip it into sticks then round the sticks into dowel

[frank bullitt]

Pallets are also worth looking at!
I have found some nice tight grained ash, maple, and walnut. I have made full length shafts from pine and fir trim boards, too.

[Wolftrail]

Originally posted by Eric Krewson:
Last I doweled on my router shaft machine was from a carefully selected very tight ring doug fir board from Lowe's, this as at least ten years ago.

At the time a 48" board cost $6 and I could get 13 shafts from it. The problem was, even from the same board, the spines would be all over the place, from 35 to 75.

Poplar seems to be a lot more forgiving.  D-Fir has nasty grain, I should know having worked thousands of board feet of the stuff and doing the final finishing work and repairs on doors.
What is your fave wood for Arrows..?

[fujimo]

sitka spruce, hemlok and lodgepole pine- in that order/
sitka is so extremely tough and light- can put all the weight i need up front- where it should be!

[AkDan]

U could use the oak for foots.   Stabilize it, you'll fill the pores and make it super heavy.   You can buy a stab sling setup big enough for this fairly cheap,or make it yourself and buy some cactus juice follow instructions.

[rich k]

Has anyone tried aircraft grade spruce? A few years ago I ordered a sample batch for a project and the grain was super straight and tight. looked like it would make great arrows

[AkDan]

Aircraft grade spruce is generally high end clear sitka spruce.  It works great for arrows.  And is usually very costly !   Imho it doesn't have the tensile strength.   It seemed to blow up easier.  This was purchased ss shafts 17 or so years ago now.  Ymmv but I won't shoot it.    It's similar to some Doug fir how it breaks that I know use for mater stakes.   This stuff wasn't sure woods shafts and lack the quality you'd expect from any arrow maker.  It basically self destructed.  

I may have misunderstood the op ?.  If u just want a heavy shaft, footing becomes a waste of time imho.   Once u jump up to the heavy shafting like ash you also step up significantly in durability.   Most footing material will be as heavy and durable as the shaft itself.   Footings were originally done on a softer shaft to either repair or make more durable the hand made shafts of the era.   Shooting foots today is no different.  Take a spruce poc Doug fir shaft and foot it you get durability.   Foot it on a light tapered shaft you move the foc forward more. Lengthen the foot u get more potential weight out front.

A way to get some meat up front would be to impregnate or stabilize the footing material.  Or as is the case in some businesses using  premade laminated materials.  I believe you'd get a significant increase in weight by stabilizing than a regular wood footing.  But don't expect to hand plane these easily!    They can be machined well but I'd guess would be he11 on even a good plane blade (hock)

[Eric Krewson]

The doug fir boards I selected was probably 30 grains per inch with the grain running perfectly straight. Even a professional shaft maker who saw my arrows was amazed by the quality of the wood I had found. Of course I had to go through about a zillion boards to find just the right ones.

[AkDan]

I hear that Eric, I don't know where these shafts were picked from, but they basically blew up.  It made POC seem like shooting rebar lol.  Now they are NOT surewoods...the grain was ok, not great in these, not bad, good enough for grousing arras anyways. Dunno if they were over dried or what but they make great mater steaks, I'm not risking my forearms/hands on them out of a bow!   I have an almost lifetime supply of tomato stakes now     It looked like they were delaminating, quite impressive.

  I stopped humoring even looking for wood around here.  I pulled out around 7 bundles of shafts I was considering selling the other day, looked at the going per 100ct price and promptly put them back LOL.  We do have birch and poplar (not sure what kind) and it's something I may consider at some point. Since the excise tax (thanks Easton) took hold, shaft prices have gone nuts!