3Rivers Archery Arrow Crafting Tips: Shaft Straightening

The arrow experts at 3Rivers Archery show you how to hand straighten wooden arrow shafts. (Scene from Crafting Traditional Wood Arrows DVD available from 3RiversArchery.com)

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• three
• rivers
• bow
• archery
• arrow
• crafting
• traditional
• wooden
• straighten
• fletch
• fletching
• cresting
• jigs
• jigging

[iscay666]

I am new to archery and i want to make my own wooden arrows but i was confused about things like spines and diameters can you help me

I shoot a 26 pound longbow my draw length is 28 inches.

can you tell me what diameter and spine i should use couse i want to get some arrow shafts and feild tips from your site and make my own fletchings.

Please reply to this asap.

[3RiversArchery]

For the bow you are shooting, we recommend a 5/16 diameter, 30-35 spine shaft.

[iscay666]

Awsome thanks and also do you ship shafts and feild tips to australia?

[3RiversArchery]

Yes. We ship worldwide. Shafts and field tips are typically no problem. However, some of our flammable items (stains, paints, adhesives) can't be shipped overseas.

[ResidentEvilGuy50]

Where do you get packs of shafts like that guy please reply

[3RiversArchery]

You can buy shafts from 3Rivers Archery. We offer a variety of woods (Port Orford Cedar, Sitka Spruce, Laminated Birch), and you can buy them by the dozens or hundreds.

[FingerprintDiVA]

I tried both your method and I tried laying it on a table and picking up one end and pressing on the belly of the shaft quite heavily and I even tried heating the cedar shaft with the stove and it still doesn't bend back. These are ones I bought from you at 3 Rivers Archery and I really wish you guys sold me straight shafts so I didn't have to figure out while cresting them that all of my shafts were bent. It took me 2 days to figure out why the arrow was wobbling in the drill lathe.

[consistentbass]

thank you so much.

I had tried the hardware store dowels, I won't lie, for a 30lb bow, but for heavier bows I wasn't so sure it was a safe thing to do.

Though, I did have some trouble straightening them. I attribute such trouble to my inexperience so far.

[squishybrain]

On cedar arrows you can, but as the wood gets harder (like ash or hickory) you'll need to use heat such as the hot plate of the kitchen stove. The same hand-straightening principles apply once you've heated it enough.

[3RiversArchery]

"How can I know the approximate or actual weight/force tolerance (as in draw weight)?"

That's the hard part. There are tools to measure these things. Some folks just make up arrows then shoot them to see where they hit and use the one that hit where they're looking.

It's much easier in the beginning to just buy pre-spined arrows for a particular bow than trying to make them from hardware store dowels or shoots found in the woods. todd smith