Arrows from pine/oak boards

[Witherstick]

So, I wanted to make shafts from scratch. I have always bought the shafts and assembled my own arrows. But, after a couple of half hearted attempts, I decided to try seriously. My eagerness resulted in poor board selection for the first serious attempt. They were worthless. My second attempt was much better.
Along with a lot of help from my wife, we got 5 arrows for each of us from a pine board and an oak board that together cost under $8. Her’s are 23/64ths pine shafts with spines at #43/45. Mine are 21/64ths oak with spines of #55/60. Her arrows weighed in around 450 grains. Mine weighed in at a whopping 600 grains.

[JonCagle]

They sure look good! What did you do to dowel them?

[Possum Head]

Very nice!

[Witherstick]

I used a veritas tapered tenon cutter.  I used 3/8 cutter and hand sanded them from there.

[UncasUK]

An exellent effort, all credit to you sir.

[Pat B]

Very nice arrows. A lot of work goes into hand making arrows but y'all will carry a lot of pride in your quivers. 
Poplar makes a very tough arrow that weigh about the same as POC for future reference.

[McDave]

Did you know what spine you were going to end up with before you started, and if so, how do you manage to end up with the spine you want?

[Witherstick]

First, thank you for the compliments.

 I knew tight grained boards yielded higher spines. So by starting at 3/8, I suspected they would be high in spine. Hand worked them from there.  The pine originally spined in the low 50’s.  The oak spined well over 100 originally!!

My wife and I went through a lot of boards before we found the straight grain and tightness of grain we wanted.