Wooden Dowels?

[Bowman4269]

Do wooden dowels work for arrow shafts? I'm crunched for time. I need a quick way out. Any other ideas?

[white wood]

bowman, ive seen many people use hardwood dowels. usually if you can find ramin hardwood dowels they work the best. hope this helps, -jesse

[white wood]

oh and most important is make sure the grain is as straight as you can find  - jesse

[Kegan]

I've tried them with little success. Making them takes little time:

Use a badnsaw with a guide or a table saw to rip out 1/2" squares a few inches longer than your draw out of a board or split of a tree (like hickory, spruce, cedar, etc.).

Chuck these up in a good electrical drill with a good bit of power in it.

The run them trhough a piece of metal with several graduated holes from 1/2" down to 3/8". Then sand it.

Takes about half an hour to make up six to twelve shafts from a soft board like pine, longer for hardwoods and tree pieces.

[stiknstring]

I have used poplar dowels from lowes with a fairly good amount of success.  Get the straightest you can and work them down just as you would any square blank with sandpaper and a plane. There was an article in TBM recently applauding the use of bulk dowels (ramin is preferred but I have had great luck with birch and poplar as well) in making small game and stumping arrows.  You have to have a spine tester if you hope to make consistent arrows though

[Hillbilly]

I've used ramin and poplar dowels with fairly good success. Just check the grain carefully to make sure that it isn't violated badly, or the shaft could break in mid-shot. Like Kegan, I prefer to make my own-I plane tham down from 3/8"x3/8" splits-but dowels are an option when you need arrows and don't have much time or material. After all, commercial arrowshafts are just fancy dowels. I remember reading somewhere that Ishi made a lot of arrows from birch dowels.

[Kegan]

I've used ramin and poplar dowels with fairly good success. Just check the grain carefully to make sure that it isn't violated badly, or the shaft could break in mid-shot. Like Kegan, I prefer to make my own-I plane tham down from 3/8"x3/8" splits-but dowels are an option when you need arrows and don't have much time or material. After all, commercial arrowshafts are just fancy dowels. I remember reading somewhere that Ishi made a lot of arrows from birch dowels.

Someone told me Ishi was almost as enamored with dowels as he was with matches when Pope showed them to him. 

Do try to find out what kind of wood the dowels are. Most people who have success with dowels have good wood dowels- I don't have much success because I can't get anyhting other than pine, or very poor quality mystery dowels.

[NorthernArcher]

I have only tried this once, with moderate success.  I sorted through the entire bin of dowels at Home Depot and came home with ten.  Six of those ten were well-enough matched in spine and weight to make a set.  A year and a half later I still have four of those six, and they are absolutely AMAZING arrows!  Four out of ten is not exactly encouraging, but probably the best one could expect from commercial dowels because of their poor quality.  You're far better off to make your own dowels.

[huntertrapper]

hard wood dowels are good i have made few with it with good success. All you do is attach your fletchings cut out nock and attach head. And maybe sand down depending on width of arows.

[scattershot]

You can buy American Woodcrafters birch dowels for around $25.00/100. At that price, you can afford to cull a few, and have a BUNC left over for arrows. The 5/16 generally run 40-50# spine, and the 3/8 are much higher, 80# up.

Good luck!

[Mazku]

I've tried to plane arrowshafts but i failed.

I have a box where i plane but they are not round nor symmetrical when they come out 

[madcrow]

Here are a few that I made before I knew how to make them.  The top 4 are ramin dowels and the bottom are cedar.  If you need heavy arrows, Lowes sells oak dowels that spine out at around 95 pounds. 



Imagine the look on the little salemans face when he came around the corner and saw me setting in the floor with a dowel clamped to the metal shelf with a 3/4 wrench dangling on the end of it.  Hey, I wanted to estimate to spine before I bought them, and I did put the clamps and wrench before I left.

[DanaM]

I have some oak dowels I'm working on but to my surprise they are laminated.

Madcrow I never thought of using the stores tools, good idea

[Hillbilly]

I've tried to plane arrowshafts but i failed.

I have a box where i plane but they are not round nor symmetrical when they come out   

You're probably trying to take too much off at once. Set the plane blade so that it's just taking off a very thin shaving, and keep rotating the shaft continuously as you plane it-you shouldn't shave the same place twice in a row.

[Wasatchhawk]

Can we get someone to do a pictorial work along showing how to plane square shafts into usable arrow shafts?