Hanging weight for arrow straightening??

[ssrhythm]

Anybody ever tried to hang weight from their shafts in a vertical manner in order to straighten them?  I can get river cane pretty dang straight.  Wood shoots...I just have not been able to get them as straight as I want them.  So I was thinking, if I can come up with a fairly efficient way to use weight and gravity to "stretch" the shaft straight as it dries, would it produce a more straight arrow?  I think I'm going to take a few seasoned cane shafts I have, hang them with some significant weight on one end, then take the heat-gun and slowly warm the entire shaft and see what happens.  Just wondering if anyone has ever tried this.

[Pat B]

Never tried that for shafts. A heating and hand straightening has always worked well for me with hardwood shoots and cane.

[ssrhythm]

It’s worked well for me too, but I always want it to be better and more straight…OR…I want to be able to get them straight with less time invested.  Between keeping my house/yard right, getting a shop built, working, being dad and husband, and getting out in the outdoors to scout, fish, hunt….throw knapping on top….there isn’t enough time in a day.  I’m trying to find a way to work smarter, and since the time it takes to make a good arrow va the time it takes for that arrow to get lost or broken etc produces my greatest amount of frustration, I decided to buy shafts while figuring out a better, less labor and time intensive way to get them straight while theoretically keeping it “primitive.” 

I was doing work on my shop and broke my level.  My framing square might be bent.  I started thinking about what I would do if I couldn’t run to Ace.  Thought about water for horizontal level and plumb bob for vertical level…then the light went on, and I wondered if I could “plumb-bob” shafts to straight.  I have bundled shoots in various ways, and I must just suck at it.  I inevitably don’t get out to green-straighten often enough as they dry, and I’m always left with a bunch of hours of heating and bending.

I think this method would work best if green shoots were weighted and hung and left that way until cured.  I figure I’ll try to see if I can straighten a cured cane shaft as mentioned in the original post just to see if it can be done while I work thru different methods of adding the weight to and hanging shoot shafts.  Regardless, I trust the laws of physics more than my eye…just trying to figure out a way to use them to my advantage.

[M2A]

Tried with a seasoned viburnum shaft and heat gun. Didn't have the success I had hoped. Spent more time applying heat than I would have if I had hand straightened with heat. Found it hard to line up the shaft exact vertical as well between the weight, shaft, and ceiling. However, I didn't put much thought into the project. Hope you have good results.
Mike         

[ssrhythm]

Welp….I went to Ace with a cane shaft and just started walking and looking for something that would allow me to hang the weight directly in line with the shaft.  I found a couple of doo-hickeys that would work perfectly.  I hung the shaft with 45lb weight and started heating it from top to bottom.  Got done…it looked good…took it down, and it was crooked as government.

I then took a shaft that I’d already straightened, and it was fairly straight with just a couple of stubborn spots.  I hung it, heated it from top down, this time making sure to evenly heat all sides as best as I could moving slowly from top to bottom.  It looked good…I took it down…it was worse than when I started!

My thoughts as to why… for a seasoned shoot shaft, you’d need the entire shaft heated to whatever temp is needed to relax the fibers and allow them to stretch to their new shape/length…otherwise, this simply won’t work.  No matter how centered you have the weight, the “short side” or the concave side of any existing bend is going to be exerting unequal pulling forces on the shaft above the bend…I don’t want to try to explain the physics of what’s going on after that, but I can visualize it now, and it’s not conducive to getting the shaft straight.  I think if you could submerge the weight and entire shaft in oil that could be heated to that critical temp, it might work to straighten a seasoned shaft.

Where I do think this method would be useful is with green shoots.  Since the entire shoot is still green and pliable, I’m thinking that hanging them with weight over time as they season would result in fairly straight seasoned shafts that would need minimal straightening.  This might be worth the trouble, as it would keep you from having to go thru the initial straighten, bundle, unbundle, straighten, bundle, unbundle…rinse and repeat.

I’m going to be cutting some cane when I’m in SC in August.  I’ll try it on a few shafts and report back sometime in November/December when they dry.

[archeryrob]

I tried the bundling and re-bundling and they were always still crooked. I just forget about them and on to something else. I just get a beer, play some music, light a candle and use bacon grease and an arrow wench to bend them straight. Apply grease and heat where it needs bending every locally and bend with the wrench.  Let it set a week or two and check again.