Taiwanese High Mountain Dwarf Bamboo arrow shafts

[Limbit]

The aboriginal archers guild in my town regularly collects these dwarf bamboo arrow shafts from the mountains south of the town I live in. They are collected at an elevation between 1 and 2km. The aboriginals always give me the thicker shafts since their bows are light poundage (around 30#) and the thicker shafts won't work well on their bows. The shafts are usually between 50# and 70#...which is good for most western archers. I have more than I know what to do with at this point, so I am open to do some trades or source shaft material for people. They are coming from Taiwan, but the shipping from Taiwan is quite cheap (around 10-20$ depending on how many are shipped) and I am fine paying for the shipment of whatever is traded over to here. I am also fine waiting on your appraisal of the shafts before shipping your side of the trade. To be fair, if it isn't what you want, we can adjust the trade or you can ship it to my family in the States. They will be dry shaft like pictured below and around 30-36 inches in length. We can talk about how many you want for what you've got in trade. I can't accurately spine bamboo, but if you give me a weight you are looking for, I can try and find shafts in that range, but you should expect a good deal of variation. Trade items listed below in order of what I would prefer. I'd also be open to 'services'. As in, someone who is willing to select good board wood from a lumberyard for me and ship it (I'll pay the cost and shipping). I can't get good board wood here. Trade items will be at bottom if you are still interested after the pics. In the measurement pic, those are centimeters remember!! The ends are a bit beat-up, but you'll be cutting the ends.

Trade items (more or less in order of desire):
Juniper stave or billets (Any usable species inc ERC)
Honeysuckle or lilac stave or billets.
Apple, plum or persimmon stave or billets.
Black walnut stave.
Straight-grained red oak boards
pounded sinew
fish glue
Anything else you think might be a good trade! I like working with unusual or uncommon wood most of the time, so if you've got something local or unusual you wouldn't mind trading, let me know. Thanks!

[dylanholderman]

when you say honeysuckle are you talking about the invasive bush honeysuckle?

[Limbit]

Yep...although I guess there.are many varieties of it. I've heard nothing but positive things about it as a bow wood, so I am curious to give it a go. One man's trash is another man's treasure.

[dylanholderman]

cool i was going to go out and collect some for my self this weekend. i will PM you pics when i do and you can let me know if your interested, be warned though the stuff pretty much always has a high crown on it.

[Limbit]

Yeah, I figure the crown would be high given it is next to impossible to find a large diameter piece. How are you planning on sealing it? It has major issues checking.  I'm fine with two billets from different trees if they are nice and clean! Let me know! I had some other interested parties as well, so I'm going to post some more pics of the rest of the shafts ( or rather bundles thereof) and see if everyone still wants them or which ones they want. I'll try and do it this weekend.

[dylanholderman]

i have noticed the checking problem in the past so far best solution that i have found is to seal the ends and chop away one side down to the pith.

[Limbit]

I dug through half the pile of shafts over at the aboriginal's guild and unfortunately many of them had small beetles in them and the guys didn't store them carefully!Ｉthink I should have collected them sooner. At any rate, I separated out the usable shafts and took pictures of them. I'll try and post them tomorrow. The majority of them are what I'd call C grade shafts. This type of bamboo is so strong, it hardly matters what grade it is, but the shafts have a bit of mold in some areas and have off shoots and will be a bit of a challenge to straighten ...which is normal. They will be durable as all hell though. The ones listed above are what I would call A-. Concerned about those beetles! I will pick up the rest and sort through them as well. Pictures soon!

[Limbit]

I dug through the second pile and many of the shafts are much better. Post some pics in a bit.

[Limbit]

Here are the shafts after sorting. The first picture is the shafts sorted into 'grades'. From top to bottom: A grade. A- grade, B Grade Heavy, B Grade Medium, B Grade Light, C grade. What I mean by grading is that an A grade would be naturally straight already, have no major defects or off-shoot and most importantly, make a nice TING sound like glass when dropped. The B grade are good shafts, but will have minor defects and are not as dense. The C grade will make arrows just fine with patience, but many of them have some big off-shoots or make a rattling sound when dropped, indicating a much less dense structure. The picture at the very bottom is of bug damage I found in about a quarter of the shafts I checked. I removed all shafts of this sort and if any shaft was in question, I cut it to the nearest knuckle to see if the insects moved between node. All the shafts have some staining due to a mold that was growing on them, but this shouldn't effect the shafts performance and will give in a camouflage look. 

[Limbit]

[Limbit]

I've got about 50 good B grade shafts left after the last trade. There were way more shafts then I thought after I separated out the bad ones. I'd be happy to part with them for some snake skins or sinew!

[lebhuntfish]

How much sinew do you want? I might be interested in the shafts you have left. Patrick

[Limbit]

Is the sinew leg or back sinew? What animal? I am kind of tired of pounding leg sinew, but I'd be down for some back sinew. I'm not sure what would be a fair exchange, so tell me what you feel is fair and we can go from there.

[lebhuntfish]

I don't personally care a lot for back sinew. So what I have is whitetail deer leg sinew. Not to sure what a good trade would be. I would consider "pre pounding" the sinew for you some. I don't get too carried away with the pounding though I tend to start ripping it apart as soon as I can. How many tendons do you need? I have a good amount currently. Patrick

[Limbit]

Well, I am looking to make a sinew backed incense cedar short bow with about three or four layers of sinew. So, I am guessing around ten to twelve pieces of leg sinew if they are long. How many shafts would you want for 12 pieces of sinew?