Hi, i'm building a set of the ewbs 'standard arrow' and thought it might be interesting to put up pictures as i'm doing it. hopefully people will offer advice and perhaps other newbies like myself would be interested in seeing someone building their first set. i've built target arrows before but this is my first set of proper war arrows.
The shafts i'm using are 3/8 of an inch ash from nidderdale archery the man i spoke to on the phone was extremely helpful and after looking over the shafts they are all very straight so i wouldnt hesitate to recommend them.
the first thing i did was mark them up for the nock inserts. a tip i read elsewhere was to make sure if there is any 'feathering' in the grain of the shaft that you should have it so the feathering points towards the nock end for strength reasons. after orienting the shaft, make a small mark 2" down from the nock end with a ruler and pencil:
then take the mark round the shaft. i find that if you hold a square against the bottom of the mark then rest your pencil on it then carefully spin the shaft round, it will give you a very nice and accurate mark:
finally, using your ruler and pencil again carefully mark a line across the center of the nock end of the shaft (if you didnt know already, as the nock on self nocked arrow always goes 90 degrees to the grain, and the horn insert always goes crosswise across the nock, this mark should be exactly in line with the grain) then, resting your square flat on the end of the shaft, you can easily connect the ends of the line you have just made with the mark you made earlier. i imagine this is a bit of a long-winded way of doing it, but i hope that by marking everything very carefully i will save myself problems later on.
Peter
