Home made woodies help

[bear bowman]

I've recently purchased a dowel maker from a reputable company and I've been playing around with it trying to figure it out. I've been using junk wood from around the house to get the hang of it before I start spending money on lumber. I have a few questions. Is kiln dried wood ok? I was thinking about getting either white pine or poplar. My other question is, the dowels I've been turning end up having voids here and there on the outside of the shaft. What may cause this? The wood I'm practicing with doesn't have the straightest grain. I'm just wondering if drill speed and or feed speed could cause the voids I'm seeing. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Bob

[Jack Skinner]

Lot to go thru with this. I have been making my own for 5 or so years now. Kiln is good I would guess that your wood in pensylvania will not be as dry as the wood out here in WY. I have not tried pine so cant help there. Poplar was my favor till just recent when the last two boards I bought got me no shafts above 60lbs spine. I just turned 2 dozen from birch and the spine is much closer to what I wanted. Around 65-70 for most of the shafts and with sanding I will get the 60lb spine I am looking for. The tear out question is something else again. It does depend on the straightnest of the grain but there are other factors as well. Harder woods tend to tear out more than soft woods for me. Feed rate can sometimes help but no always. I believe grain and hardness of wood. The birch I was turning was tearing out badly. I thought my blades were dulling, but I ran a poplar thru and it came out very clean. So most of the time it is just the nature of wood, I tried slow feed and fast with no real change in tear out for the birch. Poplar and ash turn the cleanest for me.

I also turn my shafts at least to 25/64 or 3/8's and then hand sand down to the spine I am looking for this also cleans up a lot of the tear outs. The best shafts become hunting shafts the uglys are practice and stump shooting arrow.

hope this helps a little. Mostly it is a learning process of wood that will give you the spine and grain weight you are looking for. Also not every square you rip from a board will make a usable shaft for you.

[bear bowman]

Thanks Jack. I assumed this was going to be a trial and error type of thing. Thanks for your help. Hopefully I'll be turning out shootable shafts before too long.

[Pat B]

I got some poplar shafting that Charlie Jefferson produced. These are some of the best shafting I've used. He told me that like good bow wood well seasoned wood produced the best shafts. I think he had someone slab the poplar into 2"(5/4) stock, cut them to 36" long and ricked them in his shed. He like to season for at least 1 year and said 2 was better.
 If it is one of the "pencil sharpener" type dowel maker I think you have to play with the blade to get the right angle and you have to keep the blade sharp. Charlie also ran each shaft through a compression block.

[Jack Skinner]

If you are not looking for perfection you will be turning out shafts faster than you think. Any shafts that come out to lite in spine can be tomato stakes or shafts for your wife and kids.

Pat is correct it can take some set up time to get your doweler to the size you want. I have the higher end version with inserts for different diameters and I should weld the thing in place as it is perfect now.

Last month there was a post on compression blocks like what Pat B mentioned. I am going that route next to help in clean up of tear out and improve shaft looks and I hope durability and spine.

Good luck

[monterey]

I have been using white pine and Doug for.  The pine shafts were "ok", but not as good as the DF.  I'll try pine again sometime, but will look for tighter grain.  Have no problem finding tight straight grained DF.  Am going to try poplar next but it's hard to find tight grained poplar in my area.

Sharpening is essential!  I had trouble sharpening until I used a Lansky knife sharpener.  Had to fit it with an adapter to get the right angle.  High RPM and very slow feed works for me.  Also, the jig you use is important.  You need control of the wiggle factor all along but especially at the in feed and out feed.

Mine is the Veritas 3/8" unit and the jig they suggest in the instructions is useless.

[Pat B]

The poplar that Charlie used wasn't tight ringed poplar necessarily. Also he found that the sapwood made a better arrow than the heartwood. The heartwood does have a nice greenish color but is more brittle than the sapwood.

[bear bowman]

My local hardware store is usually loaded with poplar. I've used it quite a bit around the house for different indoor projects. It's easy to work and shape. I've never seen tight grain on that unless it was more towards the heartwood. I do believe I'll start with that. I like the idea of starting big and sanding down to my weight/spine. Maybe once I get better with this thing I'll try some different woods. We still have one saw mill in the area that I may be able to get some different wood species. Thanks again guys. Always great info here.

[Jon Stewart]

I have made them out of just about any kind of wood there is just to test woods.  The yellow burch, although a very heavy arrow, came out real nice, maple came out about the cleanest, cherry made a very nice arrow and osage was the worst.

I even made an arrow out of very expensive dark grey laminated wood that made a nice arrow.  This wood came from a furniture finishing business and it was top quality laminated.

A group of us make bows, knap heads and make arrows on Thursday nights so when we set up the  double cut verita we figured out that we needed a guide behind the cutter so  we lined up a 1/2 piece of plastic pipe and use that as a guide.  Some one also stands behind the cutter with very fine sand paper and sands the shaft as it comes thru the cutter.

Make sure you push/drill the wood thru the cutter slow or you will have arrows with a bunch of rings on them.

Just a few tips from our experimenting with the cutter.

[Jack Skinner]

Not looking to beat this to death but I am bad about not documenting what works well for me. I see board I like board I rip board down and see if it works. But the discussion on tight grain made me think, possible that tight grain if not perfectly straight will cause more tear outs. More run out of grain could mean more tear outs. That could be why ash though a harder wood turns cleaner for me. The ash doesnt tend to have tight grain, lucky if on 3/8 shaft there is 1.5 rings.

I tried DF didnt work for me. Not sure if the dry weather here had anything to do with it but the boards I have tried once I turned the shaft, it would just snap in two as if way to brittle. So I havent had good luck with DF and not used in quite some time. Which is bad because it is the one wood that is easly found in straight edge grain.

[monterey]

Jon, I like that plastic pipe idea!