Dowel cutters for making shafts, a few ???

[TurtleCreek]

  I just recently bought a set of dowel cutters to start making my own shafts.  I was just wondering if anybody else out here has had any experience using these and what you thought of them.  Also, is there any guidelines as far as what diameter dowel to cut to get you fairly close to a particular spine range?

[Carson (CMB)]

turtlecreek, in my experience, the wood will dictate the spine.  That is, a 23/64 fir shaft could have a lower spine than another fir shaft that is 5/16.  It just depends on the wood density.  You can expect similar spine groups from wood that is from the same stock, usually.  So you could start with a larger diameter, say 23/64 on a couple of shafts and then adjust down if needed.  With doug-fir, you could expect to drop 5-10# spine dropping from 23/64 to 11/32 and another 5-10# dropping from 11/32 to 5/16. 

What wood are you working with?

Let us know how the doweler works for you.  Pics would be great.

[TurtleCreek]

  I haven't started making any just yet, as I am still waiting for the cutters to get here.  I plan on trying some douglas fir, poplar, and some heavier woods like hickory and white oak.

[Carson (CMB)]

I haven't ever done doug-fir (or any wood for that mattera) with a doweler, but I have a lot of experience with doug-fir (my dad is part-owner of Surewood shafts), and the stuff doesn't do real well with cutting type tools, so it might be problematic for you.  I just know that fir comes out of the knife cutters pretty rough and requires a lot of sanding to remove the tears. Definitely give it a try and let us know if you have some fir. 

[Bevan R.]

A friend of mine used to make fir shafts. He made a jig to hold the stock and used a band saw to round the shaft. It had less tearing that way.

[TurtleCreek]

How would poplar do going through the cutters?

[stringstretcher]

Poplar does great, but you have to do some things to poplar to get them to stay straight, like heat straightening.

[stringstretcher]

This stack will be ready around August, and will get me about a 1000 dowels

[Stingray45]

As others have said you can get many different spines depending on the wood. I use the 3/8" dowel cutter to make shafts out of poplar and typically I can get from 50#'s to 70#'s. But I have also gotten spines as low as 35#'s so it all depends on the wood.

~Barry

[crooketarrow]

  Back when I shot dowl arrows I had a friend that made and liked hard woods I got a 2 dozzen HICKORY for 3 years in a row before I started makeing shoot arrows. These were great in my book. Stayed straight ,heavy hard as nails.
  He prefered oak, he said they were lighter than HICKORY and amost a tuff. He said he like seeing the grain most of all. He also cut out some cherry but said they have a problem staying straight. But ASH was his favoret he said for weight and hardest. I had switched to shoot arrows by the time he'd made ASH. But have heard the thing from other people thats made arrows.

[TurtleCreek]

  Thanks for the info guys

[Carson (CMB)]

That is some good info crooketarrow.  I have been wondering about various hardwoods for making shafts. 

Just wanted to add that western indians used western red cedar for shafts, often footed with hardwood. Might be another to experiment with on your dowler. 

Also, here is a link to some do it yourself dowel making I stumbled across.  Make your own dowler with a chisel. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3MNbm3NCHE&feature=related

http://woodgears.ca/dowel/making.html

[bubby]

here's a homemade one that work's pretty good, just a piece of hardwood and a jigsaw blade, Bub

[Matt S.]

bubby,
do you feed square stock through that or do you take the corners off first?

[bubby]

you feed square stock through it, just sharpen the tip to get it started clamp it in a vice and go slow with a drill, if you put it in a vice with a rasp at the hole instead of the blade you would possibly get a real smooth shaft to sand, i think i got this idea from the arrow section over on tradgang, Bub