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.[attachment=1]
They sure look good! What did you do to dowel them?
Very nice!
I used a veritas tapered tenon cutter. I used 3/8 cutter and hand sanded them from there.
An exellent effort, all credit to you sir.
Very nice arrows. A lot of work goes into hand making arrows but y'all will carry a lot of pride in your quivers. :thumbsup:
Poplar makes a very tough arrow that weigh about the same as POC for future reference.
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?
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.