questions about wooden dowels.

[Danzn Bar]

I agree with Eric on the original question......you can heat straighten dowels, pending on wood type some is easier than others.  I have straighten oak and birch dowels with little success staying straight. hickory and POC with better results.  as far as tempering, I have tempered shafts similar to tempering hickory ramrods for muzzleloaders, and I didn't see a lot of benefit, but the material was POC.  As far as point or tip fire harding...I have always used some type of metal point. therefore harding or tempering the point was not needed.
DBar

[Predictable]

You say you "chose the straightest ones"... I really hope you didn't mean that you just grabbed a handful of dowels and chose the straight ones. I use dowels almost exclusively but you must be very selective of the **straightness of the grain** when sighting down the dowels. You want the grain to run as straight as possible with as few run outs as possible for 32-36" of the dowel (if you're buying 48" dowels). In my experience, poplar dowels will break very easily at run outs. It's a shame to put time and effort into an arrow to have it break on the first impact or worse, when loosed from the string!

If I look through a stack of 100...200... 300 dowels I'm very happy to find 5-10 perfect ones that I'd trust  without reserve. There are times where I'll look through a hundred dowels and not find a single suitable arrow.

3/8 poplar with good grain  usually  spines 80-100+ For me but you can sand them like bubbles does (eliminates all the guess work and makes them all matched in spine). I shoot 5/16. If I'm lucky enough to find a small pile of the ones with good grain ill take home 6 or so of the stiffest ones. They spine round 45-50# give or take a few. You'll be able to tell when they're way under spined so eliminate those ones while you're still at the store.. Some 5/16 will flex like a wet noodle. Sort through enough dowels and you'll get a feel for what that 45-50 pounds feels like and your take home success will improve.

I straighten by hand as well.

Appreciate the informative response. Unfortunately I did choose the ones with straight shape rather than grain. However, I don't shoot at anything other than cardboard, and the dowels have handled well so far. However I missed once and hit a badly placed concrete slab and the arrow split at the tip.

The reason why I bought 3/8" was because the homedepot sells the dowels 7/16", 3/8", and then something much smaller than 5/16". I knew before buying that 5/16 is a common arrow diameter, closest thing was 3/8 so I bought it. but I didn't realize the significance of 1/16 of an inch.

Next time I go out to buy, I will definitely take into consideration and use this information. Thanks.

[Eric Krewson]

I like to doll up my arrows with stains, cresting and wild turkey feathers, I won't put this kind of time building nice arrows into shafts with grain runout.

My above mentioned poplars had no grain runout, I never broke one, I have two left, the rest were offerings to to the woods gods behind the targets I missed. It took me ten years to loose the bulk of them.

[Pat B]

Poplar is some of the best, toughest doweled arrows I've used. I got a couple of dozen from Charlie Jefferson(stringstretcher)  a few years back. Charlie made his dowels from well seasoned poplar he cut and seasoned himself from fresh cut poplar timbers.