How did people spine arrows back in the day???

[Chad]

Did they use a weight (rock)  and just have some kind of benchmark??? I'm sure they didn't have those $200 inspector gadget spiners I've seen online.

[IndianGuy]

Lol, well depends on how far back way back is?
When I was a kid we named or numbered our arrows and knew how each one shot, never spined a one.
E

[Pat B]

I imagine folks that depend on their arrows for food and safety could tell by feel how a shaft would shoot. Because of their natural taper cane and hardwood shoot arrows shoot well from bows of different draw weights.

[Chad]

I think I'm just being lazy not wanting to build a spine tester, I know its not terribly difficult

[mullet]

I did what Indianguy did except I didn't number them. I'd just shoot my favorite arrow till I lost it and then find another good one.

[lebhuntfish]

My buddy made a spine tester and he has all kinds of problems getting arrows to shoot good. After he sees me shoot the ones that I threw together he ask me "how do you get your arrows to shoot that good without spinning and weighing them?" I said, "I just aim the way each one of them fly. I just remember witch one hits where." Patrick

[ajbruggink]

I think Pat B is right, I don't think people back in the day had time to spend building stuff like spine testers. They probably tried to figure out what made the accurate arrows accurate and why the other arrows were not and they figured out that an arrow has to bend around the handle and then straighten itself out to hit the mark, so they bent the accurate arrows and memorized that feel and did that bent test when making more shafts. Pat B also makes a good point about the natural taper. A Pre-Columbian bow from Texas in TBB vol 3 is a 75" hickory beast with a 1 5/8" wide handle and 1 1/4" tips but it had a notch carved in the side for the arrow; that bowyer recognized that it was difficult for an arrow to paradox around that wide handle or at least it was difficult to find arrows to match it, so he made it easier for the bow. Just my two cents.

[Chad]

hmm yeah I can get Tonka bamboo from lowes for a buck each maybe Ill just cut them real long and shoot and trim until im happy, but Kentucky windage the arrows seems like the most logical, it's inevitable that even I will make one have way decent arrow!

[George Tsoukalas]

Spine testers are handy but self made, hand made and shoot shafts still have to be tuned.

Get it close or a little above and test shoot it. Check this. It's all here.

http://georgeandjoni.home.comcast.net/~georgeandjoni/selfbowcare.html

Jawge

[Jim Davis]

When he was still shooting wood arrows, Howard Hill would make a batch and shoot them. He kept the ones that hit where they should and gave the others away.

L.M. Stemmler recommended numbering the arrows, as said up thread.

I suspect it was not generally know how an arrow behaves going around the bow before the high-speed filming done in the 1930s.  That's when people began to talk about spine. The definition of that term was indefinite for a while,  as were ways of measuring it.

Plenty of in depth reading on  the subject in "Archery, the Technical Side."

Jim Davis

[ajbruggink]

When he was still shooting wood arrows, Howard Hill would make a batch and shoot them. He kept the ones that hit where they should and gave the others away.

L.M. Stemmler recommended numbering the arrows, as said up thread.

I suspect it was not generally know how an arrow behaves going around the bow before the high-speed filming done in the 1930s.  That's when people began to talk about spine. The definition of that term was indefinite for a while,  as were ways of measuring it.

Plenty of in depth reading on  the subject in "Archery, the Technical Side."

Jim Davis

Now that you mention it, that makes a lot of sense, I wouldn't have known how an arrow behaves going around a bow if no one ever told me and I certainly wouldn't be able to see it in action

[Joec123able]

Don't know what ya mean by back In the day but back thousands of years ago they didn't "spine" there's no possible way they would have known about spine on arrows but im very sure they had arrows that shot better than others and knew that so they'd use those first.

[Badger]

  I suspect they did know about spine. The atlatl came before the bow and they were well aware of spine in the darts. A badly spined arrow might shoot 2 feet off at 20 yards, a bow would be almost useless without some knowledge of spine.

[Danzn Bar]

If it shot good out of his bow he would keep it,,,,,,if it didn't he would trade it,,,
DBar

[Dharma]

Arrows would be tested at targets and the accurate shooters would be culled and kept. The ones that weren't accurate served another purpose. As long as they would land within a four foot circle of thereabouts, you could wrap the heads of these in tow and keep for fire arrows. If you're going to launch them into the thatch roofs of an enemy village, you're going to lose that arrow obviously. So you don't need your best for that, just the ones that will hit a circle the size of a hut roof.