If I'm working outside I'll just clamp the handle of the heat gun in a bench vise. But for now the benefit of being young and flexible. Sometimes I st on the ground and use my feet o hold the handle, other times I use my knees. I've tried sitting this heat gun on its back, but the cord is o stiff that it keeps knocking it over when I get it where I want it.
I've been meaning to make one of those tools myself, but I've just never wanted to take the time to make one yet. It would probably take 15 minutes to make a useable tool. And an hour to make it pretty and functional. I'm thinking a walnut cut off with a little sapwood wth the heart, make it look like a capital F, with the tips slightly curved in toward each other and a reinforcing taper expanding out from the fingers. Maybe before the next batch of shady straightening.
Out of 30 shafts I had 2 split on me while drilling out the tips to take a dowel plug so I could cut a taper to accept glue on points. All this work on these arrows and I'm just going to give away over half of them to a couple of friends. Oh well, it's an excuse to make some more arrows. I really need to go walk the chariton River and see if I can find me a good patch of river cane and upgrade a bit from the garden stakes. They they are so cheap it's hard to pass them up. If they have a full bin of packages and you are picky on which ones you get, then most of the pack will make useable shafts. Every now and then the entire package is good. I pick through the 36" lengths, and they usually run about $2.50 per dozen stakes. So at this point I had bought 3 packs, so 36 stakes and ended up with 28 useable arrow shafts. So after tax, for less than $10 and a few hours of time, I ended up with 28 shafts. On average the tips are 5/16" diameter with the largest being just under 3/8" before sanding and the nock end run from 1/4"-5/16". I done have a spine tester, but most feel like they should shoot well from 40-55 pound bows. With this batch of shafts, I'm going to sand the nodes smooth and hit the main shafts with 220 grit to smooth then out a little. Since being garden stakes, cruet aren't the best quality bamboo. Oh, and I drill out the tips with a 5/32" bit and plug in 1" of 1/8" dowel with a little TB3 to lick it in. When pushing in the plug. Stop pushing as soon as any resistant if felt, if you push through, you will split the shaft. If it doesn't just slip in full depth.
After sanding the nodes, all I've got left is to cut the nocks. Easily doable with hand tools, but is SOOO much quicker with a band saw. Usually 3 bandsaw blad widths is perfect string fit. And they are ready for samding in about 2 seconds per shaft. Other wise, I drill an 1/8" hole 3/8" in from the end, hand saw a groove to the hole and widen the groove with a box knife. It works but is slow. I'mtrying to figure out a quicker method with hand tools. I'm thinking about trying a tile saw blade of several hacksaw blades glued together to be 1/8" wide.
Kyle
