you guys could try out wild rose too, its a really common invasive shrub thats easy to identify, and works pretty well. takes a little longer to make due to seasoning, but not much. just pick shoots that are straight, finger size and cut em to 3 or 4 foot length then bundle them together to dry for a month or so.
I had shoot red oak and i had no problems with them.
btw there really are no such things as dumb questions, forums like this are a resource for those looking for information and most of us are more than willing to share whatever info we can to help. i still post questions that are probably very novice things.lol
You can make your own dowels from poplar boards with the Veritas 3/8" dowel maker from Lee Vally Tools. The dowel maker costs $40 shipped to your door and you can run them through it very fast. In a few hours you can have several dozen 3/8" dowels made and then sand them down to your spine with a drill and sand paper. This way you don't have to wait on the store to restock the dowel bin. Over half the dowels in their bin are not suitable arrow material usually.
Poplar is a particularly good species for making your own, because the trees tend to be straight with very little taper to them. This increases the odds of getting straight grain without much runout. Using hardware store dowels can be risky, if you don't know how to read the grain. Ramin is particularly hard to read because it is a tropical hardwood, so it doesn't have the seasonal growth rings that make reading the grain easier. I've seen ramin shear off when it hit the target, which makes me very wary of it.
ramin is pretty hard to read the grain,at first i had a few that werent good because of this but i started carrying an eyeglass cleaning cloth with me to dampen the dowel before i buy it to be sure the grain is straight enough. people look at me wierd but it works.lol
Wow a ton of timely info, thanks to everyone. I think the son and wife will soon be shooting 5/16" poplar. I want to make a jig and try tapering some 3/8" poplar and try on a heavier bow. Thanks again!
i chuck my 3/8 dowels in my drill and run them over the belt sander to taper, i used to do it by hand with 80 grit sandpaper but it takes awhile. the sander works well, and gets a pretty even taper. if there are high spots due to wobble then i use a chisel on the shaft thats chucked in a drill to get em straight. last step before i apply finish is always compressing, and what i use for that right now is a padlock and do it by hand. ive used shellac for finish, but it will add a little weight, and its not particularly tough so i switched to using tung oil finish on my arrows. self nocks i saturate with superglue in between steps of shaping to make them a little stronger, then i wrap them with art sinew for reinforcement. good luck in your arrow making, im sure youll be pleased once you get the process down.
Ok, now for a really dumb question...in the quest for penetration, and given that i would have to make the dowels, has anyone ever tried making arrows from the more dense species. Ipe in particular. How would something that dense spine? would you be better off just footing with it? I know that when making a bow with ipe you can use less wood to make the weight pull bow you want, and even though the wood is heavier by volume you end up saving mass overall. Would this work against you making arrows, meaning, would the difference in wieght vs stiffness for ipe vs other woods be so different that you couldn't make the right spine and grain combination?
i would guess that it would spine test higher, being dense. Similar in comparison from poplar to ramin dowels. I have footed poplar dowels with red oak dowels, and i think there was a small change in spine but it would depend on the length of the footing. If you could accurately read the grain on ipe you could make a few shafts and try them out, or just use them for footing. either way depends on the particular pieces you have available, and how the grain is. ramin 5/16 dowels usually spine in the 40-45 range for me,while poplar at 5/16 spines in the 30-45 range depending on footing and taper. i have a poplar dowel that is 3/8 with an oak footing that spines in the 75 lb range although it is pretty short, im expecting it to spine about 45-50 when its finished. it all depends on the particular wood and length i think,along with diameter. personally i feel better about footing with harder woods than using them for shafts, as they may be hard to straighten. also, if you build a hardwood shaft and it snaps in half all that works gone, whereas a footing you just put on a new footing. also helps with the weight forward.
Loren, you have to compare the density to the bending strength to see if it will make good arrows. If a species is heavy and has a relatively low bending strength, the arrows will be very sluggish.
Be very careful working with Ipe. It is highly toxic and has caused a lot of bowyers a lot of health problems. Lots of other dense woods that will work for footings.
thanks guys, i am really interested in making some cane arrows, but since i am currently working on a BBI as a going away gift for my Colonel, i thought about the Ipe
BTW, Ragnarok, i went to Mountain View HS way back when before i moved back to TX, small world
man this is an excellent thread. always plenty of bowery threads, rarely arrow threads around here, i didn't know ANY of this info.
i make mine from poplar and oak dowels, the oak is heavier and seems way more sturdy. i break a LOT of arrows out shooting, and i break about 10x more poplar than i do oak.
dumb question of my own:
i don't know how to tune my bow, and i just barely understand this spine stuff. i'm shooting my latest 2 projects, a 50# fiberglass longbow and a 50# hickory selfbow, both have 1/4" arrow shelves, what spine is likely more appropriate? the 30# poplar spine or the (probably) 50# ish oak spine? (using 5/16th dowels)
you might want to try some arrows spined around 40-45#, although 45-50# might be ok too. generally you match arrow spine to your bows weight, but bows that are without a shelf cut in or ones that have shallow shelves you use a lighter spine for the arrow to bend around the handle. to get the right spine just use a higher spine dowel and then chuck it in a drill and sand till it comes to the spine you want.
My experience with a heavier wood, I used osage, for footing shafts, and have found when at 3D shoots, (missing the foam) :scared: Osage is darn neer indestructable when fired into rocks. The comparison would be to POC which invariably breaks 1-3 inches behind the BOP in a similar endurance test. :bigsmyl: :coffee:
Mike
id like to try some osage footings, next time i can im gonna buy some stock to make some . then again if i buy osage itll likely be a stave:p lol
IPE really messed me up, for a month I was under a doctors care. But it doesn't affect everyone. Sitka Spruce is another good arrow wood. I have bought sitka spruce boards and they made great arrows. I cut them into 3/8th square blanks and used a hand plain and sand paper to turn them into arrows. I have a thin metal hole gauge that I use to get my diameter after I use the hand plain to get them fairly round. Just start at one end and slide the gauge down the shaft. When it get's tight, pull it back off and sand that area a little. Then I keep going on down the arrow shaft.. Takes about a half hour to make 1 arrow with hand tools. But it's a lot of fun building your own arrow with hand tools.