Thanks, guys. The way these turned out really gives me hope for the better ones. In answer to Papa Matt's question, the shoots were fairly straight to begin with. I hand straightened them while they were still green, and gave them all a wipe with rendered deer tallow before bundling them to season (I haven't had too many problems with this species checking, but I figured "why risk it?"). It's easy to find long shoots of silky dogwood that are free of branches, but many of them grow with a long, gradual curve. As Pat B mentioned, silky dogwood is very similar to red osier dogwood. The main distinguishing features are the color of the pith (tan-to-salmon colored for the silky, white for the red osier) and the color of the berries (bluish-purple for the silky, white-to-greenish white for the red osier). The shoots are easy enough to heat straighten but in time they want to return to their original curve. I try to select only fairly straight ones in the field; in this case, I left more in the piles than I took. I heat straightened them before running them through the dowel cutter and again after I had sanded them just prior to staining. The shafts took the walnut hull dye well; I just wiped it on with a paper towel, let it dry and took off the grain raised by the water-based dye with 600 grit sandpaper used very lightly. I collected a bunch of goose feathers this year by scoping out ponds where our resident geese hang out and watching for feathers in the grassy areas (they usually molt in early June here in VA). I got a whole lot of primaries plus some secondaries, which I'll probably use for kids' arrows, stumping, two-fletch, etc. I cheated a little and used fletching tape (if y'all haven't tried it, you're really missing out- great stuff!), but I left little nubs on each end of the fletches which I tied down with sinew and a dab of hide glue.
