Time to make arrows

[DC]

Looking at my wall full of bows has kind of taken the wind out of my sails as far as bow making is concerned and I haven't made any arrows for a while so---
I only target shoot so my main interest will be them but any input will help.
I've made a few dozen arrows but they just sort of happened. I didn't have a plan or sequence of doing things. I made a bunch of arrows and then modified/adjusted them until they flew right(ish).
Where do you start? In order to get the shaft to the bare shaft stage I will need to know spine, shaft weight, tip weight and I'll have to make the nocks. How do I decide these things ahead of time and arrive at arrows that are optimised for target shooting?
 So first, I'm assuming that I want the arrows as light as possible, yes or no?

[Hawkdancer]

DC,
You need to decide what shaft material you want to use first.  Pick which weight range you want to make the arrows for, i.e. 45 - 50# spine your shafts as close as possible to match, make your nocks, add points,  bare shaft test and rework if needed, fletch, seal, crest, and you're in business.  Getting the shafts to match is the challenge!  You are on the right side of the border to get shafts from TSA at a good price!  We get to pay a tariff down here!  Have fun!
Hawkdancer

[DC]

How do I decide what weight range? Physical weight, not spine. As light as I can get within my spine range? I'll probably be using bamboo but that could change. I do have a piece of Sitka Spruce but it's only 24" long so I would have to foot them. That could be fun.

[Knoll]

I've made many arrows.
Here's low, high, and avg grains/inch for a number of shafts.
Hard Maple               13          18          17
German Spruce          9           15          10
Doug Fir                    9           15          12
Poplar                       12          15          13
River Cane                12          19           14
POC                           9           15          12
I've never done this excercise before. Interesting results.
Hope this helps ya.

[DC]

OK, lets go at this a different way. If you decide to make some arrows what is the first thing you think about? Weight, spine weight, tip weight?

[Knoll]

spine

[Danzn Bar]

 +1 What Mike (Knoll) said.
DBar

[TSA]

spine, most critical, then weight group.
then tip weight to suit spine- if you are chasing high foc, then i would adjust spine accordingly.
i am not sure what bows you are building for- so i have attached a link to our spine charts.
these charts will get you really close.
and you can play around with point weight vs spine, vs draw length and draw weight at your DL.
i find the Sitka averages 10 to 11 gpi
that was a nice chart knoll put up

http://www.trueshaftarchery.com/spine-charts-.html

[TSA]

chat to Blayne, he will help you matching the shaft variable to your bows.
good luck!

[Blayne]

We can chat. Give me a call or we can chat at the Gathering about this. In your situation and your desire for speed, I would go with the lightest physical shaft in an appropriate spine range. For selfbows I normally suggest going down in spine or right on(eg:40lb bow 35/39 spine) species is irrelevant if they are hard to come by or you want to make your own. For us Canuck folk Sitka is the easiest to come by as a milled shaft, but for natural we have lots of options of course. Happy to help however I can!

[DC]

We can chat. Give me a call or we can chat at the Gathering about this. In your situation and your desire for speed, I would go with the lightest physical shaft in an appropriate spine range. For selfbows I normally suggest going down in spine or right on(eg:40lb bow 35/39 spine) species is irrelevant if they are hard to come by or you want to make your own. For us Canuck folk Sitka is the easiest to come by as a milled shaft, but for natural we have lots of options of course. Happy to help however I can!

I was already planning on a chat at the Gathering. I have a piece of Sitka Spruce that I got at Windsor(a 2"x4"x2' cost $30) that I tried making recurved Molle levers with. Sitka doesn't like sharp bends . I decided to use it but it meant footing all of them. I had some Purple Heart so I footed four shafts yesterday. I'll post some pictures later.

[ohma2]

Ive footed quite a few cedars in the past ,realy like them and like the look, but as im sure your aware footing with hardwoods isnt going to help with achieving a lighter arrow.good sitka spruce is good stuff.

[ohma2]

Might do some barell tappering for  weight reduction.

[DC]

I'm kind of hoping that if they are footed with the heavier wood I can cut down on the tip weight and still arrive at the same FOC and total weight as if I used Spruce for the whole arrow. It's unlikely but since my Spruce was only 24" long and I had to get them up to at least 27" I thought I might as well make them look nice. I want them to be light but since they're target arrows I don't have to be as anal as if they were flight arrows. As long as they weight the same and are fairly light I'll be happy. I usually use bamboo arrows so it will be interesting to see how durable they are. The big test is the target butts at the range. They have a metal framework all around the outside edge and it's amazing ho often my arrows find their way into the metal. They bamboo ones survive reasonably well, we'll see how the Purlpeheart does.

[DC]

I hate bare shafting!! I sanded down one shaft. Got the spine to about 5# above what I normally use for this bow. The PH footing worked out as the FOC was in the same spot as the arrows I'm using now and the weight was a little less. So bareshaft time. I stood about 10 feet from the target and did a half draw shot. It hit nock right showing that it was too heavy. I expected that with a half draw. So I did an almost full draw from about 15'. See picture. Why does bareshafting break any arrow I make that isn't bamboo? I had this same kind of problem with my shooting machine and solved it with a swinging target but I see guys on youtube using the same target as me and they don't break arrows.
The footing looks nice

It really makes it tough to continue with these arrows. It's a lot of work to just bin them all.