Making arrows from boards

[BAK]

I know many of us buy shafts and then build our own arrows.  I'm just curious as to how many of you have just started with a board and made arrows from it???

[Orion]

I have.  Easy enough to do with hand tools, but a lot of work.  When I figure my time, it's less expensive to buy.  The hardest part is finding boards with straight grain.  I have a table saw so no problem cutting square stock and a V-groove into a block for hand planing.  Some folks buy or build a dowling jig to take the square stock to round. 

The spine and weight can vary widely, even from stock cut from the same board, so it's usually necessary to build a lot of shafts to get a few in the specific spine and or physical weight one is seeking.  Another reason for buying where one can specify the spine and weight and get pretty much what you ask for. 

[Gordon Jabben]

I have done some of it.  I have made quite a few arrows out of ash and walnut.  The walnut in my area grows slowly and has good stiffness and made the best arrows for me.  I bought a doweler from a company years ago and my nephew, a mechanist, modified it.  It's used with a wood lathe.   

[Pat B]

Be sure you use well seasoned wood and not just lumber off the shelf or it will be hard to keep the shafts straight.

[Doug Treat]

Once I made a single shaft out of ash. Wanted to see if I could take an elk with it. I had back up arrows but that ash shaft was all it took. Shot through a cow elk's chest and put a hole in the off-side scapula. If I remember correctly, the arrow was almost 700 grains, barrel tapered with a hand plane from square stock.

[Bobby Sikes]

Once I made a single shaft out of ash. Wanted to see if I could take an elk with it. I had back up arrows but that ash shaft was all it took. Shot through a cow elk's chest and put a hole in the off-side scapula. If I remember correctly, the arrow was almost 700 grains, barrel tapered with a hand plane from square stock.

That is a great story, although short, still great! 

[ozarkcherrybow1]

It is a labor of love. I have made a lot from maple cabinet scraps and cedar blanks from 3 rivers. You have to make a lot of shafts to get a matched set.

[Kirkll]

Years ago I went off the deep end making my own arrows from a bunch of different wood types. I even laminated some beautiful straight grain redwood material with carbon fiber running through the center one time to stiffen up the spine…..

Footing cedar or Doug fir arrows with hardwood at the tips make excellent hunting arrows with great FOC balance, but that is a serious undertaking requiring special tools, and I never got into that much.

Bottom line is… it’s a fun project to play with, but very hard to get matching sets of arrows in weight and spine tolerance. Even turning very consistent material I was having to build 100 arrows to get a dozen matching in weight and spine.

I did find that tapering the shafts a bit you could customize the weight and spine a bit to help get matching arrows….  But after the novelty wore off, I went back to carbon shafts…

Have fun with it…. Kirk

[BAK]

These are arrows that started out as a poplar board.  I used the pencil sharpener type tool to turn them into dowels,  then footed them with a two wing Paduk foot.  And yes, it does take a long time.  I've since made a 4 wing jig for doing the footing using my router table.  That worked well too.

[Pat B]

About 10 years ago Charlie Jefferson(stringstretcher) decided he wanted to make poplar shafting. He had the poplar milled and stacked and stickered it for over 2 year before starting to make the shafting. Charlie used a Veritas dowel maker(I guess like BAK used) to produce the shafts. He sent me a couple of dozen shafts and asked me to see if I could break them under normal use, like shooting into trees, rocks, etc. I never broke any. These poplar shafts weighed slightly more than POC but were a lot stronger.
 Ironically the poplar sapwood made better shafting than the heartwood. The heartwood was a lot more brittle than the sapwood.
 While experimenting, Charlie found he needed at least 2 years of air drying or it was hard to keep the poplar shafts from warping.