Arrow Shaft Planing

[Flashman]

There have been several very good posts on this subject but I think I am a little slow so please bear with me.

I have a large quantity of POC square shafts of about .389 to .400 inches in diameter that were made to be doweled for arrows.  I am a little unclear on how to proceed and I guess part of this comes from John Strunk's arrow shaft planer.  He had one at a class I took several years ago and I wasn't really interested at the time and didn't pay attention.  From my recollection and other pictures I have seen, the squared shaft is placed in the notch/groove in the board/jig and turned after each full length stroke of the plane.  Here is where my recollection is fuzzy.  I believe one planes the shaft until the plane lays flat on the jig (where no more material is removed)?  This may not be achieved for several rotations of the shaft and material removal.  Am I correct?  This must mean the notch in the jig is perfectly calibrated to achieve the intended diameter (it indicates the two standard diameters in the 3 Rivers description)?

If so, how does one achieve that level of precision in making the notch or groove in the jig?

Is John's planer concaved?  Is there such a thing?  If so, is it important to this planing system (perhaps the concaved blade is the adjustment)?

I would your thoughts. 

Thanks.

[Bevan R.]

I made one of the jigs you are talking about some time ago. You just need a straight grove to hold your shafting.
I made mine by cutting some pine with my table saw angled at 45 degrees. Did 2 them mounted them onto another piece of wood to form a V shaped grove. Got a small hand plane and started making shavings.

Start by putting your square in and take one of the corners off the full length. You just want to take the corner off. Then rotate and do the next corner.
After you take off all 4 corners, you should have an octagon shaped shaft. When you get practiced, you will have an even sided octagon.
Then take of each of these corners giving you a 16 sided shaft.
You could then usually start sanding with say 100 grit then work your way up in grits until you get where you want to go.
The idea for planning until no more wood comes off is because the plane that comes with the jigs 3Rivers sells is curved. One side of the jig is for 11/32 & the other is for 5/16.

In the 1st volume of TBB, the late Jay Massey has a good chapter on making shafting this way.

[George Tsoukalas]

Other than harvesting shafts from nature, hand planing is the only way I make shafts. I use a little 1 in plane and a board with 2 cleats spaced to allow the edge of a 1/2 inch dowel to rest in it. More on my site. Jawge
http://georgeandjoni.home.comcast.net/~georgeandjoni/shafts.html