Parallel & tapered shafts, questions.

[slowbowjoe]

Been shooting parallel doug firs for a while, and considering tapered shafts in order to bring my arrow weight down (shooting mid 40's, I need the very lightest fir to get down to 11gpp, and would like to reach 10gpp).
I go with 50-54 spine with the parallels; would I be best off with the same spine for tapered, or do you go up in spine for equal flight?

Also wondering if you notice any difference with the little higher front weight with tapered.

[LittleBen]

you can search for my tapered shaft calculator, it's an excel spreadsheet that will calculate final arrow weight of a tapered shaft based on the weight of a parallel shaft.

That will tell you what weight you can expect on a finished arrow parallel vs tapered.

Not sure you will lose 40grains by tapering but maybe. Might need to barrel taper to get there.

I'm working on my first set of tapered doug fir shafts ... mainly because they look cool. I can say its a bunch of extra work, if you're goign to do the tapering yourself, expect to put in some time.

Also I can tell you from testing that you will probably only gain around 3% velocity from a 10% decrease in weight, so don't expect a drastic change from 500gr to 450gr. If you're shooting 150fps @ 500gr, maybe you'll get 155fps @ 450gr. Or if you're at 200fps @ 500 gr, you might get 206 fps @ 450gr. The gains aren't much. You probably wont change point of aim much at all within any reasonable hunting ranges.

[Don Stokes]

The same spine should work well.

[Pheonixarcher]

I've heard that tapering reduces spine a little. How much I'm not sure and I don't have any personal experience with this. Ymmv.

[Don Stokes]

No more than 2-3# usually.

[McDave]

If you want to reduce overall arrow weight, maybe you should consider going to a lighter wood, like Port Orford cedar or spruce.

[Fletcher]

A 9-10 inch tail taper has little effect on shaft spine, about 2 lb on a 50 lb shaft, and about 10-15 grains of total weight.  I spine all my shafts after I taper them, so it isn't an issue for me.

Fir has been my preferred shaft wood for many years, but Sitka Spruce is very good and a good bit lighter.

[slowbowjoe]

Helpful input, as usual.

McDave, just tried a dozen sitka spruce, and the weight worked out perfectly... but I do a lot of roving in rough woods, and it seems like the firs hold up better.

[arrow flynn]

too bad you cant get 5 16th shafts out of fir.

[Bill Carlsen]

What Fletcher said. When I was making arrows and my own tapering the spine never varied by more than 1 or 2#'s.  Average weight "loss" was 10 grains....even on heavier hardwood shafts. Since good quality cedar is  hard to find and you want a lighter shaft the spruce would be my recommendation, as well. Lodge pole pine (chundoo) also makes a sweet arrow that is very much like cedar without the aroma.

[LongStick64]

Tapered all the way now from wood to carbon I've seen better accuracy using tapered shafts.