Wood dowels for arrows???

[JC Jr]

Going to play with a light weight longbow and would like to make some wood arrows for it. I haven't done that for 40 years and I still have several 5/16 nocks and points along with the tapering tools.





I see wood shafts have gotten expensive and 5/16" shafts are near impossible to find, especially in 25 to 30#'s.





Wondering... have any of you tried wood dowels from your local hardware? If so, how did that work out for you and how did they spine?

[Captain*Kirk]

Dowels are not recommended. First off, they are not spined nor weight matched. You gotta buy a lot of dowels to sift through the batches to find anything even close to a set of pre-spined and weighed arrow shafts.
Second, almost all the hardware store dowels I've seen have grain runout in at least one spot...sometimes more. Grain runout needs to be carefully monitored and indexed so if the shaft breaks on release it won't end up shish-kabobing your bow hand. Yes, it's happened. More than once.
Third, the wood used in hardware store dowels is not ideal for arrow shafting. It's usually either too soft (pine, softwoods) or hardwood such as hickory. Hardwoods can be a real  to work with on tapering, etc.
My advice, should you choose to accept it, is either buy a good grade POC (Port Orford Cedar) set of shafts spine and weight matched, or go with something other than woodies. Yes, a dozen POC shafts S/W matched will run you around $50.00. But that's the cost of doing business.
My .02 and worth every penny...

[Pat B]

A few years ago ramin dowels were popular for shafting and made pretty good arrows. You really have to scrutinize each dowel for bends and grain runoffs and can only make a guess about spine and weight. I have seen poplar dowels at Lowe's and have made poplar dowel arrows with good result but the ones I used were made to be arrows.