Anyone want a dogwood arrow build-along?

[iowabow]

My dye is looking great this morning. So now it is time to cut the shaft. The wt of the uncut shaft was 702 grains so it gained some wt. I thought this did not seem right. So as i cut down the shaft I put the meter to the wood and it read 11%. That is low but not the 9% I thought I would see. I think the outside dried down below 9% in the sun and then picked back up the difference during the humid weather we have had the last couple of days. I continued to spine the arrow to the same measurment as my good arrow that I like so well. I will lightly sand them and the stain with the staghorn dye. The new shaft wt unstained is 562 grains.

[Stringman]

John, when u and I were talking yesterday you mentioned something havin a "mordant" quality. Can you elavorate on this a touch?

[iowabow]

John, when u and I were talking yesterday you mentioned something havin a "mordant" quality. Can you elavorate on this a touch?

A mordant helps to fix or bite the dye to the fiber or cell. Native americans used staghorn as a mordant  to fix bloodroot dye to leather. I am hoping this will work with the dye I made yesterday. We will know in about 3 weeks.
My arrow is not as cured as I hoped but I am going forward with the dye to see if it works early in the process. 

[iowabow]

Here is the first coat

[iowabow]

What we are shootin for is the color on the left test stick.

[iowabow]

I am going to scrape the bands to get white and make black from an egg yoke and charcoal to make lines around the bands. Thinking about tung oil "natural" as a sealer. Although I was reading about a sap from a sumac tree that can dry oils. Maybe a project for next year.

[iowabow]

Scott here is the blackberry only arrow that was deep purple only a few weeks ago. I knew from last year that the color would change but wow it really is a big difference. I think that the color in the sumac should bite and hold on better. By the way is the poke berry you used changing?

[iowabow]

I want to backtrack here for a minute and talk about the dye in the pan. I split it so I would destroy all of it but that which I first cooked down was still giving good color so I boiled all of it down an inch from the bottom. I had started with a full pan that you saw in the photo.

Also I did not talk about working the arrow shaft with primitive tools.  The nock is a self nock but it is standard in most ways as you have see made on this site. I could have used a flint tool to make the nock but I used a  metal file.  It takes about 10 minutes longer to do it with flint. When thinning the shaft a flint tool works just as well as a modern metal blade.  I have done it both ways but in this post I wanted to focus on the dogwood and dye aspect.

[iowabow]

I have four arrows to make so maybe I will work one with flint.

[iowabow]

So here is the tool I have used a lot on shafts.

[ratshooter]

I have to say those are some pretty dang straight arrows looking goos so far!

[iowabow]

Here is some real time data this is done and maches the other shafts all done with flint.

[iowabow]

Thank you ratshooter!
Here is what this dye/stain looks like after a few coats. I kinda like them but time will tell if it will hold up.

[AJMag]

I actually really like that light cherry red color in the comparison pic higher up there after the first coat. The darker red wouldn't be bad either but it looks a little rough, not as smooth of an appearance of the lighter one. Is there a reason behind that?

You kind of lost me with the talk about the notch, then jumping to the file to remove bark. What did I miss there? Were you referring to the a notch in the tool to remove bark, or a notch made in the wood? I haven't really watched any other shoot arrow builds yet so I'm slightly ignorant in what you referred to as having seen made elsewhere on this site.

[iowabow]

sorry my mistake nock is what I mean not notch. I will go back and fix it in the post