Well, I have been "making" (gluing together. Fun, but not that involved.) arrows for several years now. I have been wanting to start making cane arrows for my selfbows, but haven't got around to it. This past spring, I cut a bunch of river cane from some roadsides here in Arkansas and did some straightening as it was drying over the spring and summer. Today, I finally set about putting one together. I didn't make it a fully "primitive" arrow, as I don't have all the fixins yet. I wanted to see if the mechanics would work and if I could get it to make sense. If this prototype worked out, I would tweak what needed it and make more. If not, then I wouldn't have lost a lot of man-hours in assembly of a couple dozen only to find they all failed. Needless to say, I was VERY pleased with the result. The unfletched shaft shows better flight than my commercially purchased Sitka Spruce and POC shafts do when I am tuning them. Just flawless flight and right where I was looking with no porpise, fishtail, or kick. I then just slapped some commercial feathers on with tape and it was even better.
For what it's worth, the shaft is *mostly* straight rivercane cut this spring. I sanded it with pretty rough grit paper. Used an old repurposed Sitka Spruce shaft to whittle-to-fit a forshaft of about 4 or 5 inches. I glued this in with Gorilla Glue and wrapped the joint with artificial sinew/Gorilla Glue. I then cut a shallow selfnock and smothed it out with a file and sandpaper. This was reinforced with artificial sinew and Gorilla Glue. I used a 145 gn field point and figured that if it was terrible, I could go either up or down from there. I needn't have worried. It flew just fine.
NOW, that I know I can handle the mechanics, the nuts and bolts, I feel okay about going ahead and diving in to create fully or almost fully primitive cane shafts. Just another bit of fun to be had in the bowhunting world.
