River cane arrow vs Cedar arrow question

[kid bow]

now forgive me if im wrong but everytime i shoot cedar arrows they break and are useless. i think they gained fame from the aroma and thats it. if you are intent on useing a solid wood shaft i suggest sitika spruce. its a marvelous wood to work with and is very hard to break..  i did an experiment with a peice of cane and a modern carbon shaft. and under my testing  i went hunting with both arrows and found the the cane arrow held together better and longer than the modern carbon arrow. thats my veiw on it

[JW_Halverson]

Jonah makes a great point about sitka spruce.  IF you have to have lightweight shafts, you will gain twice the strength as cedar with only a modest gain in physical weight in sitka.  There are many places to get sitka spruce shafts, but only one manufacturer...Hildebrand.  They have been advertising in PA for a while, too.

[gutpile]

they are not called natures carbon for no reason..haha.,...the only cane I ever broke went in a animal and they broke it running off...so it has happened about 5 times...gut

[kid bow]

Jonah makes a great point about sitka spruce.  IF you have to have lightweight shafts, you will gain twice the strength as cedar with only a modest gain in physical weight in sitka.  There are many places to get sitka spruce shafts, but only one manufacturer...Hildebrand.  They have been advertising in PA for a while, too.

 hmmmmm nice to know

[Pappy]

Cain are tougher ,no doubt about that,just a little harder to get a consistent set
when making them. I do like sitka spruce over the poc you get now days. I use to get POC from Acme in Washington I think and they were great shafts,they have long since gone out of business and the ones you get now have way to much grain run off to suit me, sometimes maybe half of 100 I would want to use for my arrows.
   Pappy

[stickbender]

     With bamboo, and cane, you have layers of fibers running in straight lines, as opposed to grains, running sometimes in somewhat straight lines, and with the bamboo and cane, there isn't any running off of the fibers as is the case at times with wood shafts.  Some people love Sitka spruce, and say they are very tough, and flexible also.  I have broken commercial "Cedar shafts" but I don't know of any one who have broken a cane, or bamboo shaft, in normal shooting, such as target, or hunting, and not hitting trees, rocks etc, even then, some people have reported hitting rocks, and only the point broke, but the shaft was undamaged.  That doesn't happen very often with wood shafts of any type.  But if you don't have access to bamboo, or cane, you use what you have.  But if you want bamboo, talk to Mullet, and he can give you the address, and details on how to get a bundle of five hundred bamboo shafts for arrows.  That will set you up in a nice supply of material, for making arrows for quite some time.  

                                          Wayne

[David_Daugherty]

Thanks for all the comments.  I live in lower Alabama so have access to more river cane than I could ever plan to use.  I will just plan to stick with the cane, it works and is very durable.

[Lee Lobbestael]

Well guys I like cedar because it is soft quite stays straight is easy to straighten and yeah it smell great and reminds me of a sauna on a cold winter night!

[Badly Bent]

I've just about given up on cedar shafts, too expensive for no longer than they last. The shoots of arrow wood viburnum and dogwood that I collect and tomato stake boo from home stores are durable, just more work but I enjoy arrow making anyway. I will admit though
that the cedars will stay straighter but a straight arrow thats now only 15" long because it snapped is of no use.
Greg

[Ifrit617]

I shoot poplar shafts. The stuff is heavy and damn near impossible to break if the grain is straight. I have shot dozens from point blank with a 48# bow into the side of a dead and seasoned oak tree, along with a number of rocks, and have yet to have one break.

Jon

[Easternarcher]

I have made tomato stake arrows before, but always wondered about a couple of things..
1. Is it wise to sand down the nodes flush with the shaft?
2. Do I need to pay more attention to spine for the shafts?
3. what weight should a person expect to see with tomato stakes? Hunting weight shafts? 500-600 grains?

I did not worry about the spine for the ones I made, cuz I just wanted to try them for giggles.
So, what is the best way to spine cane or tomato stakes?

[Tom Leemans]

Eastern -
1. Don't have to. Just smooth them over and they shoot fine.
2. Stick with the stuff that isn't over 3/8" dia at the fat end (that's the front end) and they generally shoot fine. You will find that a lot of them spine pretty high, yet shoot just fine.
3. Most of mine weigh more than a cedar shaft sporting the same heads and fletching. I don't pay much attention to weight matching them. I just put the best shooters in my hunting quiver.

There are several ways to spine them, but a simple way is to spine an arrow matched to your bow by hanging it on 2 nails 26" apart on a wall or fence or something. Hang some sort of weight around 2 pounds in the center. Mark the deflection. Now you have your benchmark to compare your new cane shafts. Make sure you rotate all shafts so you are marking the stiff side.

[Easternarcher]

Excellent!
That's what I'm doing over the Holidays...