River cane spining questions

[Aries]

Ok so Ive recently cut, dried, and straightened my first batch of river cane arrow shafts and made a few prototype arrows . My main issue at this point is arrow spine.  What methods do you guys use to narrow the ranges of arrow spine in your rough shafts?     Do you have to straighten an arrow shaft before you spine it?  And what are some general things you do to speed up the over all process of arrow making?  Thanks guys   Ty

[Pat B]

Cane arrows don't seem to be as spine sensitive as other arrow woods. Usually shafts of similar diameter will spine similarly. I cut the arrows long(29" for my 26" draw) and they seem to fly well for me.  The node sides of the cane will be the stiffer sides so they will go against(and away from) the bow. Put the stiffest of these two sides against the bow.

[Hillbilly]

What Pat said. I have made cane arrows that shoot well in bows of widely varying poundages. I still try to get them matched as closely as I can in spine and weight. Do a "rough" spining before straightening to get you in the ballpark, then fine-tune them after you have them straight.

[Aries]

Thanks guys, i will go cut another batch this weekend .  I only ended up with about five close matches out of the thirty i started with this time. Ill probably take a set of calipers with me next time lol  

[Hillbilly]

Don't know if the calipers will do a lot of good-wall thickness has more to do with spine than outside diameter, and it often varies considerably within the same patch of cane. I just cut a bunch, and sort it into piles of different stiffnesses. I can usually always find some bow that a given spine will work with.

[welch2]

I take a finished arrow with me ,so I get in ballpark .Otherwise I cut them way big .    And I always cut them about 40 or 50 inches long. Then as I dry and straighten them , I sort them in groups of stiffness ranges like Steve said . But I have a long peice to cut my shaft out of either end or middle ,to get a spine I want .Or even make it a different spine group to work around a bad nasty bend or whatever . I cut a lot of canes though.

Ralph

[Bill Skinner]

When I cut cane, I take an open end 3/8 wrench and a 5/16 wrench.  If the 3/8 fits and the 5/16 doesn't, I cut it.  It save a lot of wastage.  If you have more than one bow with very different draw weights, you can go up on the larger, it is hard to make a self nock with anything smaller than 5/16.

[recurve shooter]

somebody told me to use a half inch wrench. i shoot a 55 lb recurve for now. would that work?

[Pat B]

A 3/8" diameter(at the big end) cane can easily spine 80# or so. You don't have to have 1/2" cane to get high spine weight.

[Sleep Junkie]

recurve shooter - Awhile back in a post I mentioned using a 7/16" or 1/2" open end wrench when selecting shafts, but I was referring to the collection of multiflora rose shafts.  From what I hear, they really shrink up.  When it comes to cane, I have no idea what would be the best wrench size for gauging which shafts to cut because I have never worked with it.  It may have a much higher spine to diameter ratio.