Best wood for 450-500 gr, FOC arrows?

[WhistlingBadger]

Well, here's where I pay for not keeping better records of the various arrow woods I've tried over the years; I feel like I should already know the answer to this.

I want to make some arrows for my new bow, 450-500 grain finished weight, with 150gr heads.  Spine 40-45#.  So I need shafts of that spine that will fall in the 300-350 gr range.  Of course I want something that's strong and a good value. 

I like sitka spruce, but wowee it's expensive, if you can even find it.  Douglas fir is probably my favorite shaft, but it's pretty heavy.  Is POC my best bet for hitting this weight range?

T

[Pappy]

I use a lot of POC, I like 45/50 or 50/55 , if 50/55 I just leave a little longer to reduce the spine, I shoot 160 field points and broad heads and usually they come in 500/525, little more or a little less but close to that at finished weight. 
 Pappy

[bentstick54]

I have been using 40/45 Surewood DF from Feathers and Wood when he’s setup at 3d shoots to save shipping costs. I can go through his shafts and find them in 350 to 360 grain weights at the full length 32”. With 125 gr points and cut to 28-1/2” back of point they come in around 475 to 480 gr total arrow weight.

[JW_Halverson]

Go straight to Carson Brown at Surewood Shafts.

[Robert Pougnier]

My favorite are wild rose shafts. They vary quite a bit for spine, but they are very dense and you can get pretty narrow shafts that are around 350-400 grains. If you find a nice patch (mine are in a couple of wet ditches) they can be pretty consistent from shaft to shaft. I use the 2nd and 3rd year floricanes.
With a 100 or 150 point and using the thicker/bottom as the hafting end they are consistently FOC by an inch or inch and a half. They also can grow with very little kinks and will stay straight once worked over with heat.

[WhistlingBadger]

Pappy, ordered some POC.  Haven't used it for a long time.  We'll see how it does.
JW, sent him a message. 
Robert, the spine issue is the main reason I have never gotten into shoot shafts, though I absolutely love the idea of making them from scratch.  I don't have a spine tester, and I don't have enough experience to get them right just by feel.  How do you get consistent spine on shoot arrows?  We have some nice raw materials around here, rose and chokecherry mostly.  Just don't know how to get them consistent. 

[Robert Pougnier]

WB: I also don't own a spine tester. It's the next piece of gear I'd love to get!

I usually straighten extra shafts and bare shaft test all my arrow sets with the bow they are intended to be shot with. I keep ones aside that did not match and then group them with similar ones later once I test a different batch. I do some testing bending by hand but It does not help me much. It's invariable that there is quite a bit of variety there. I have not used timber shafts as much but I understand they can vary some too depending on grain orientation and density.

It's definitely a bit of extra work. But the rose shafts are very durable and never break since the grain is intact. I've had several shafts break over the years, but the only shoot shaft to ever break on me were viburnum.

Chokecherry is really good as well, I like it almost as much as rose and it can be easier to find good shoots as they grow in larger patches more commonly than rose. I think if you were to have a few bundles of dried rose or cherry shafts on hand you would inevitably get the bug to try them at some point, I totally recommend giving them a chance!

[WhistlingBadger]

I guess the way to do it with shoots would be to tune each arrow individually.  That would be time consuming but probably worth it if it resulted in scratch-made, indestructible arrows.  I'll give it a try one of these days.