Arrow shaft production day

[EwokArcher]

Those turned out smokin!
I've made 2 sets of bamboo arrows out of home depot bamboo. Heat straightening and all that. Ton of work but great experience I loved the arrows and got some good use from them. I'll keep buying carbon shafts from now on I think though.

[Roy from Pa]

I used to do that also.

Now I buy the bamboo shafts all straightened, sealed, ready for feathers...

[Flem]

those arrows are very cool, but I am liking the old log walls that look like Tamarack stuffed with oakum.

[C. Johnson]

Ok, so update on the arrow shaft project.

It was a busy weekend and I didn't get nearly as much done as I should have.  Mainly because I had to put a new master cylinder in the wife's Toyota.  What should have been a two hour project voraciously consumed most of Saturday.  I really don't like working on cars anymore. 

Anyway, arrows.  I keep any poplar that has excessive grain runout or other minor defects and use it to make laminated shafts. I cut it into slats and discard any with major defects such as pin knots. I grind each poplar slat to about .140" and grind a center strip of maple ground to .125".  These make good, durable, consistent arrows.  I can control the spine by altering the thickness of the maple core and also by the finished diameter of the shaft.

Here are a few pics of the process.

This is the three pieces which comprise the laminated billet.  Poplar-maple-poplar.  I try to orient each one in such a way that the grain is reversed like so: ///||\\\

[C. Johnson]

Here are several such billets awaiting glue up.

[C. Johnson]

I'll spare you guys the pics of me spreading TiteBond II with a putty knife.    Anyway, I apply a generous layer and then fold a piece of wax paper over the whole thing.  This keeps glue off the bench, clamps, etc.  I use pieces of 1" angle iron to evenly distribute clamping pressure and to keeps the lams in an even stack.  Titebond isn't nearly as slippery as Smooth on, but the slats do want to slide around a bit.

Yes, I've used Smooth on to glue up my billets.  It works great, but it gets kind of expensive.  Also, the required clamping time is much greater.  Here in dry Colorado, I usually only need to leave the billets clamped for an hour with Titebond.  I do two hours just for good measure.  I do not perform any further machining until the glue has cured for at least 24 hours.

[C. Johnson]

A close up.

[C. Johnson]

[C. Johnson]

Some billets sunning themselves after coming out of the clamps.

[C. Johnson]

I put a clamped bundle of 4 billets through the jointer and then the drum sander to true them up.  This way I end up with a good, straight edge to cut from when they go through the band saw.

More pics to come later.  Thanks for looking!

[Roy from Pa]

Pretty cool, Craig.