here, i'll give a little input as well.
Now, remember this is my opinion, based on my experience, albeit experience gained from running hundreds of thousands of shafts.
i have used Ipe, Hickory, ash, poplar, birch, Lodgepole pine( chundoo), osage, fir, Hemlock, sitka spruce, and even a few Yew.
now most of these have just been a few dozen or more shafts for experiments- but i ran maybe a thousand fir, have run a lot of hemlock and pine , and even more Sitka.
there are a lot of good arrow woods out there- but i still think the best arrow wood, is the one you have in your shop!!
But, just talking about Fir, and methods to work it.
in my experience, these coastal woods like to be around 11 or 12 %MC. perfect for yew staves, perfect for other rain forest conifer woods. i find at that MC, they are most stable, shatter less, and cut easier. We keep our grading room at a very specific MC, so that the shafts stay at around 12%.
now drying wood: there are a lot of opinions on this. the risk with commercially dried woods, is that you dont know how they were dried, out of a "spaghetti mill"- they can dry a load of 2x4's in 24hrs- imagine the torture in those boards.
another thing about kiln drying, is that just before the boards are removed, the temp. is spiked- this is to ensure a total bug kill, and to set the pitch- that will do damage to the boards- for sure.
ANY HEAT during the process of drying will damage the cell structure of the wood to some degree or another- this will vary from piece to piece, dependant on so many factors, ie:starting MC, finishing MC, temp attained, duration of high temp, quality of wood etc etc
Thats the very reason that we wont kiln dry any of our wood.
talk to musical instrument makers, or shaker furniture makers or coopers- they will tell you they dont want kiln dried wood- for the very same, excellent reasons.
when I ran fir- which is an awesome arrow wood by the way, I found it to be a wee bit brittle, but then Hemlock can also be- i find their characteristics very similar. Good hard hitting shafts, but just need to keep them from getting too dry!
when I had raw fir shafts in Alberta- they got so dry that they would just shatter on impact so badly that i was scared to shoot them, and i tossed a large armful of fir shafts, not wanting to take the risk, or run the liability.
when we started out many years ago, we started with one of those Veritas dowel makers ( not the tenon cutter) and they work quite well.- the issue with them is,( and this is the biggest problem with DF, as the manufacturers that make shafts from DF will recommend the use of sanding jig raher than a pencil sharpener type taper tool) that DF does not like the cutting tool running across the grain, it will produce a lot of tear out, tool chatter and will shatter.
most of the Df shaft manufacturers will use tools that cut with the grain. eg: routers or molders- now they have some advantages, the main one being incredibly high productivity, but also have their own host of issues- the biggest one is producing shafts that are out of round- shafts that are slightly oval, which play heck on a cresting jig- but in all fairness dont affect its flight characteristics.
so thats the background, now what to do with your fir board?
1. i would get the MC in the right place- store it in your bathroom and monitor its MC.
2. build a dowelling jig, using a router and a hand held drill.
3. stay away from the cross cut tools for Fir.
4.seal up the shafts as soon as they are made, to retain the mc, and keep it stable.
keep us posted
