I finally decided to make the switch from aluminum arrows to wood. I shot aluminum in my compound days, and with a little tweaking, I made them work ok out of my traditional gear. I tried a few 11/32 POC with 125 gr. field tips at work the other day and was instantly converted. No amount of tweaking ever made the aluminums fly like that first wooden shaft did. I don't think I will ever shoot anything but wood ever again!!
Two questions...I plan to order raw shafts and create my own arrows. Are the nock and point tapers covered with the final finish along with the rest of the arrow, or cut in after the finish is applied thus leaving raw wood for the glue to adhere to? And secondly, how can an a single size shaft be ordered in so many different spines? Seems to me, you take a particular material, say POC, and make a shaft of a particular diameter out of that material, place it in a spine meter, and it spines what ever it spines. When I was looking at the raw shafts in the catalogs, POC at 11/32 was available in ranges from 40-45 to 65-70. Can't quite understand that.
Thanks in advance for your time and answers. dj
Wood is a natural material, and will vary considerably just based on how the particular tree it was cut from grows. As an example, I planted a bunch of pines on my property about 12 years ago. Some trees are now way over my head, while there are a few straglers that are barely up to my waist. They aren't arrow shaft material, but if they were and we cut one of each down, they would both have the same number of growth rings, since they are the same age. But the spine of the arrow made from each would be vastly different because of the difference in the tightness of the grain.
"POC at 11/32 was available in ranges from 40-45 to 65-70. Can't quite understand that"
That's just Mother Nature at work-nothing to understand.
I cut the nock and point before finishing and then sand or scrape away the finish to glue the nock and point. Making woodies is almost as much fun as shooting them. Have fun!
Forgot to answer your first question. There are many different methods on how to build arrows. What I do is taper first, then apply stain. I then put the nocks on and dip the finish on by hanging on to the nock. The point taper will accumulate finish in the process that will need to be removed in order to get the point to set properly. That's what works for me, but there are many ways to skin that cat.