Alan Case's flight arrows - learning how to make them!

[mikekeswick]

When Alan put that build-a-long on Paleoplanet all that time ago I immediately wanted to make some of these split cane arrows. However a lack of suitable bamboo and a lack of experience put me off....a few years have passed and i'm now better equipped with the correct tools and I have found a very good supplier of quality Tonkin cane I have also been doing a bit of reading about the incredible distances shot by the Turks all that time ago and my interest has been piqued. I have finally started getting somewhere with the making of hornbows and have some flight bows 'in the works' so to speak.
In this post I will show my progress with these arrows.
I made my first one yesterday, mainly with a hand plane, and its glue is drying as I type this. I am waiting for some of the c section aluminium to be delivered after the weekend then I'll be able to make a batch of them much quicker. I wanted to make this first one by hand to figure out widths of strip, thickness of the walls and other things that need to actually be done to get a 'handle' on the process.
Anyway I'll spine and weigh this first one when the glue is dry. I know it is going to be overspined and heavy for a true flight arrow but it will tell me a few things

[mikekeswick]

http://paleoplanet69529.yuku.com/topic/29783/Split-Cane-Bamboo-Flight-Arrows

Here is the link to Alan's build-a-long. Thanks

[willie]

http://www.powerfibers.com/BAMBOO_IN_THE_LABORATORY.pdf

broken link repaired
in  Alans article

[PatM]

Mike, you can probably find a lot of good info on flyrod building sites as well. Hollow cane rods are now more common.

[mikekeswick]

Yes Pat, I've been looking at them already! That's where I got the contact info of my new Tonkin supplier.
Well I went to the club today to shoot all my old flight arrows and my new cane arrow. It's specs came out at 68# spine and 310 grains. Which is kind of what I expected. I fitted a 20 grain brass point I turned for it and fletched it with some turkey feathers I had spare.
Shooting my old 48# hornbow with a 16 strand B50 string I got shots between about 280 and 350 or so yds....guess which arrow went furthest...the split cane everytime. My old flight arrows are a mixture of woods and weights. Pitch pine, redwood and lime and between 230 and 360 grains. This first cane arrow should be overspined and too heavy but it flew beautifully clean out of the bow.
Anyway now i'm just waiting for a few things then i'll get on and make some under 200 grains.

[avcase]

One chance I've made since posting the build-a-long on PaleoPlanet is that I now glue very thin flat bamboo strips to a sheet of balsa, and use this as the starting point for making the strips. The result is the arrow ends up with a balsa core instead of hollow. It adds some mass, makes the arrow a little more durable and resistant to splitting.

Alan

[PatM]

It should stiffen it a bit as well. I know some bamboo bike builders spray expanding foam into the bamboo tubes for this reason.

[avcase]

I agree, the balsa core may help stiffen the arrow a bit too. Tonkin is very dense and heavy, so the trick is keeping the thickness very thin for lighter flight arrows.  The nice thing about these Tonkin split cane arrows is that I have never had one blow up in the process of shooting them. I have blown nocks, but the arrow usually fails with lengthwise splits which remain intact and seem to be less of a danger than the way some of the all-wood arrows blow up. 

I did see a split-cane arrow disintegrate on the launch, but it was made from Japanese arrow bamboo, which was pretty brittle after heat treating compared to Tonkin. The arrow was intended for a sub-35# bow and was shot from a 70#+ bow.

It would save a lot of time if I could go back to 100% wood arrows. Freshly heat treated Sitka spruce is incredible, but quickly loses its edge as it rehydrates. I was thinking of keeping wood flight arrows in a dry-box to see how long it can maintain high stiffness.

Alan

[willie]

Alan-

not to sidetrack the bamboo discussion, but I  some have sitka spruce drying now for arrowstock. would you be willing to recommend a heat treat schedule for it?
thanks
willie

[redhawk55]

Heat- treat the sitka spruce till it begins to carbonize, it can't rehydrate.
Michael

[Marc St Louis]

Your arrows Alan are a wondrous invention but I just cannot wrap my mind around their being allowed in the primitive flight class while other things, such as forgewood arrows and FF strings, are not.

[avcase]

Split cane flight arrows are not my invention. I have learned they built by the Turks going back to their earliest days of formal flight archery.  I feel that the only reason the Turks stopped making split cane flight arrows is that they didn't have reliable access to the best bamboo species, and found ways to make equally good wood arrows.

The restriction on forgewood has been dropped from the rules.  For one, it is simply heated and compressed wood, and secondly, I feel forgewood is comparable to the more dense tropical species for a flight arrow material.  The forgewood used in flight arrows I have seen is more of a liability due to its high density.  They are either too heavy, or need to be so thin that they are not stiff enough.   The restriction was originally put in place because there was a mistaken belief that the arrows were infused with some kind of synthetic resin.  A second reason given is that forgewood shafts were no longer made and available to most people, but this point is only relevant if a forgewood arrow offers a clear advantage.  Super short forgewood arrows were used with modern flight bows until carbon became available, but it should be noted that the farthest shots ever made using natural material shafts was done with Douglas Fir arrows made by Lee Sublette (1975, 1000+ yards).

I agree there is some good logic of disallowing sophisticated composite arrows with self bows. I'd be willing to put it up to a vote with the flight committee.

I wouldn't want to disallow the option of using composite arrows for the composite type bows however.  Despite the lengthy process, a composite arrow of natural materials does follow the spirit of flight archer, going back to its roots.

The one beautiful fact about the existing primitive flight rules is how it limits the materials, but not design. This puts us on equal footing with those building flight equipment at any time in the past or future.  I'd be reluctant to vote to allow synthetic string materials for a primitive record because it represents a major departure from this philosophy. 

Alan

[mikekeswick]

I've got enough strips for 8 arrows prepared to the point where they now need to be barrelled. I should get them glued up tomorrow. I spent a while making a jig that holds the strips as I run them through the saw to cut the angles. Then I need to try and get some good feathers or I might try parchment.
Gluing them to some balsa makes sense for the glue line integrity for sure. I may try that when I get my new cane. Alan have you thought about making them with more strips to get a more circular cross section?
I don't know the rules so can't comment on these arrows 'legality' but they can be made entirely with handtools out of natural materials.

[avcase]

There is currently nothing in the flight rules blocking this kind of natural material composite arrow for the traditional or primitive classes.  I have been making composite flight arrows since 2004 just to see what I could do with them. I don't think I broke 100 yards at the 2004 flight championships!

There are some very old Turkish flight arrows that were made from 12 or more strips.  I played around with this but found that six works quite well. More strips may help if I was making a very large and stiff arrow that needed to be light as possible.

Alan

[mikekeswick]

I've got eight arrows glued up and curing now. I ended up making them a range of different weights by reducing the wall thickness to varying degrees. I think the weights are from about 170 grains to 300.
I figured out a different way of gluing them up after realising that you need three pairs of hands to get the strips all lined up prior to wrapping them! If you place the strips side by side, outer side up, then put a piece of sticky tape onto them and trim the excess off with a scalpel. I used five pieces about 3 inches long. Once you have them all taped together flip them over and use a brush to cover them in glue. Once you have enough glue on them use something flat to scrape the inner surface free of excess glue. Then simply make a tube, the tape holds them all perfectly and wrap with fishing line. If I hadn't figured this out I don't think I would've got the lightest arrows glued up well enough.
Alan you are definitely right about Tonkins drawback being it's density. I had to go about as thin as I dared to get them under 200grains....the wall are definitely a bit thin! What I'm thinking for my next ones is that I will reduce the width of the individual strips so that I end up with an arrow with a smaller overall diameter but thicker walls (for the larger gluing surface). Higher sectional density and less air to push out of the way.
Once this first batch is dry I'll spine and weigh them all, then it's off to the big field
Alan - one more thing have you ever thought about using this technique with any of the dense, stiff tropical hardwoods? Obviously you would need a perfect board for no tearout etc.