ok, I just deleted the hole blasted post...grr Its long!!!
I fail miserably at writing in thrift, or just writing in general.
SO I talked about building a hex shaft using bamboo fly rod principles. You'll find things like tempering and node work directly correlates to bowyers like Hill and Schulz, Vinson Minor etc.
Whats this have to do with hollowing. Simply put, the bamboo fly rod guys have figured this out to the T! The process is simple, the figurative date to achieve is not! I wont bore you with equations I've long since forgotten. Instead I'll leave you with enough information to get a go at this if you really want to build hollow shaft in a fashion that is repeatable and consistent.
After all the end process of bowhunting and archery is consistency. This takes a 150 yr old principle (or older) with a little modern data/materials and combines them.
First one must understand the basics of bamboo fly rod construction.
Its relative simple. a 12' culm cut in 2. Flamed for color, split into appropriate sized strips for the rod at hand. Straighten straightens and straighten some more, flatten/compress the outer node, remove the inner node, prebevel, bind, heat treat, finish plane, ***hollow***, tape the strips together, open them up glue, bind, clean it up and you have a blank.
Mind you this is seriously over simplified. A quick search will come up with an unlimited amount of information. I've been studying the process of bamboo fly rods for the last 4 years, working on an off as much as time permits with a local Alaskan rod builder (400 miles away) and procuring the tools/jigs and materials to finish my own rods. Life has a way of throwing curve balls lord knows I have plenty of those.
This is not going to be easy...and depending on what you have for tooling/experience and your over all desire/drive, it may or may not be simple to extremely hard. The over all process is easy!
150 years ago hex fly rods were made from wood, not bamboo. Bamboo came into hits hay days in the late 1800's through the 40's. In the 40's and on the embargo made it tough to get Tonkin cane, what became the osage of bamboo fly rod building. The industrial revolution brought us fiberglass and eventually carbon shafts, though bamboo fly rods seem to be seeing a form of revival, there's still only a few full time builders, and a few thousand hobby builders to some degree or another.
Whats this mean to the arrow guy....well Bob Burton realized its potential along with a number of other folks and put it into place as we know today. For those that don't Know Bobs closing his doors due to his manufacturer closing up shop. I've had a few conversations to help fill in the blanks via phone and email with Bob on the subject, the rest I pulled from the pages of rod building.
A method of hollowing without having a complete hollow shaft is called the EC Powell method. Back in the day E.C. Powell would replace the inner apex of a bamboo strip with port orford cedar due to weight, and than scallop out sections of the POC down to the boo, which became the indicator or depth gauge if you will. A very consistent way to achieve an end goal. Today few use POC for the apex, instead they leave the bamboo intact. You be the judge what's better. For a wood shaft I think I'd opt out of replacing the inner apex of a strip.
A simple planning form can be made from wood with simple tools. A table saw will go a long way in this hole endeavor but you don't need a shop saw to accomplish this. A cheap desk top table saw will work fine. you can google wooden planning forms and how to build them....woods easy to work and the over all measurements don't need to be as exact as you think. The push pull method of planning forms would apply here and I'll explain why at the end. Or a simple V grove with a set depth plus excess left in for the rounding process and youre set.
Rip strips according to grain, plane to a 60 degree piece of said thickness depending on diameter and spine...bind, open up, glue and rebind.....
you'll need to knock the corners off to get a round shaft. Thankfully you're not taking a pile of wood off here. But you do need to leave extra in the over all figure for this so keep it in mind.
Where does hollowing come in. Well lets go back to the EC Powell method. Leaving those dams keeps the structure integrity of a dowel and yet hollowing the inside to remove weight. For a fly rod this removed weight means quicker recovery which turns it into a faster acting rod than its similar solid rod, and it makes it easier for an all day vigil on the water. It makes me wonder about the recover of archers paradox. Think hollow rat tail tapers of a cane/bamboo shaft and the quality it possesses!
To the arrow guy.....
You can achieve your HIGH FOC, or even SUPER high FOC relatively easily with traditional materials with some fun shop time. None of the work is overly hard, it is however potentially time consuming depending on how you go about this. You may come to find you don't need to plane (wood) and still achieve great results right off a pre-beveller (medved or baginski). This would alleviate the planning forms used in bamboo fly rods, though with them it makes a rat tail taper (straight taper from end to end) much easier to achieve and keep the hole centered! Than hollow glue up and finish round.
For glue TB3 will suffice. Unibond and Urac will give you a stiffer dynamic spine than tb3. epon and nytex will be somewhere in between.
I'll end with this.
A guys imagination is his only limit here.
Hollow tails ala Bill matlock
barrel/breasted tapered shafts
single tapered shafts
parallel shafts
Hills famed rat tail tapers (read the old stuff you'll find it!).
Hollowing for a lighter shaft to achieve a HIGH FOC if that's bag without needing to find a solid wood shaft with an absorbent spine...you can build the spine into this shaft. Or a lighter shaft for you 3d paper guys...or the guy who likes lighter shafts. Or better yet, insert a piece of say ebony in the front 6"es with a concrete brick for a super extremely giganticus EFOC shaft
.
your mind is only limited by the road you're willing to walk. This is not unquestionable or out the reach of the average guy with average experience and tools. how badly you want to do this will be your limiting factor!
Topic: hollow wood arrows (Read 1697 times)
