Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Arrows => Topic started by: agd68 on April 29, 2008, 12:48:50 pm
-
Hi all. I`m a traditional archer begining to dabble in the primitive side. I have a few questions. Are cain and bamboo the same thing? Do you spine cain shafts like othe woods. I live in Eastern Canada, any local archers have advise on good arrow woods.What is chokecherry like as a shaft?
-
Our native river cane is a bamboo, but it can be quite different from a lot of the Asian ones. It's closely related to Tonkin cane and Japanese arrow bamboo, which also make great arrows. Cane seems to be a bit more tolerant of spine variation as a shaft because of the natural taper. I flex mine by hand, and can usually get them pretty close to the right spine just by feel. I've never tried chokecherry myself, but it was used a lot by the Plains tribes as arrow material, so I would guess that it makes good shafts. Some other good shaft materials you probably have in your area are redosier and gray dogwoods, highbush cranberry and other viburnums.
-
like steve said the vibunums and dogwoods are great. cherry doesnt like to stay straight but it works
-
i duno if ya have it there but sourwood works great!!! ;)
-
I grew up in NH and dogwood was the best stuff I could find. You guys probably have a lot of grey dogwood and red osier up there. The only dogwood that is difficult to work with is silky dogwood (if I remember correctly). It gets "fuzzy" when you scrape the bark off.