Shaft Materials?

[gene roberts]

What is the best shaft material?  Thanks For All Opinions

[david w.]

depends on what you have at hand in your area.  can you tell us some things you have access to?

[gene roberts]

Not specs because I don't anything to make them out of   just dowell rods or something,but I have lots of woods like 35 yards from my house.

[Pat B]

If you have woods in your area, you have shaft material! Look for straight shoots coming from the base of trees, shrubs and some annual weeds. Tree stumps where trees have been cut usually have shoot material growing. Take a walk in the woods and look for the straight lines of shoots...before the leaves come out.   Hickories, oaks, poplar, pine, birch, viburnum, spice bush, sweet shrub, horse weed, dog fennel, golden rod, and the list goes on. These are all common names. If you need botanical names I can probably come close.      Pat

[gene roberts]

Sweet  I will look tommorrow

[Pat B]

David, spice bush should be blooming in your area. Have you identified the shrub you talked about before for arrows.?    Pat

[Hillbilly]

My favorites in my area are cane, cane, cane, sourwood, arrow wood viburnum, buffalo nut, and hazlenut. There are many others that make good shafts, just experiment with what you have around you. Sections of pine and tulip poplar logs can also be split and planed into good shafts.

[flecha]

When I was in Oregon I LOVED California Hazel.  Now that I'm in Utah, I make do with Red Osier.

[recurve shooter]

i be workin on my sourwoods. great stuff.

[richpierce]

Cane is ready to go.  So is Phragmites but it is weak compared to cane. Never step on your phragmites arrows, but they will fly noticeably farther than any other I've tried so far.  Any shoot requires 2-3 times more work and 5 times more time than cane or Phragmites.  Most shoots shrink a lot when drying so get them bigger than you think you need.  Shoots takle a long time to season, then you have to remove most of the taper as well as making them straight.  it's good winter work.

[david w.]

David, spice bush should be blooming in your area. Have you identified the shrub you talked about before for arrows.?    Pat

yep it is spice bush for sure i should make arrows from some pretty soon

[Hillbilly]

Pat, have you tried sweetshrub? I made a few shafts up awhile back from it and I was quite impressed with its weight, spine, workability, and tendency to stay straight. I haven't tested them thoroughly yet, but I think it's going to be another great material.

[cowboy]

I've used Salt Cedar (also heard it called Tamarisk) and other shoots of some kind that I need to ID one of these days. Just walk around in the thicker woods - their'll be something straight to try. Cane seems to capture my interest the most though - has been an obsession of sorts to find a source of good cane. Not that it's any better, I dunno - but it's what I want .

[recurve shooter]

i think i  need to dry my cane indoors now. it got all brittle and stuff outside. thats what i get for being impatient

[Kegan]

If you have large power tools, like a large bandsaw or table saw, you can cut up 3/8" squares from logs and turn them into shafts with a hand plane- or, if they're still slightly green, chuck them up into a corded power drill and run them through a piece of metal with graduated holes cut into it. The second method takes about ten minutes a shaft, maybe five if the grain is straight. I prefer this method as you can just use small billets from a stave tree, and hickory makes such sturdy arrows I wonder if modern carbon arrows could have met their match (hickory flexes, they don't).