Acquiring, Manufacturing, and Straightening Wood Arrow Shafts
For raw fresh wood, don't use soft woods like spruce saplings, even though they are generally straight, they are weak and light.
When selecting a raw shoot, keep in mind that there are several obvious reasons why you want shafts to be sourced from relatively straight wood; however a less obvious reason, is that every time a shaft must be straightened, micro cracks are formed (an effect exacerbated by the severity of the initial natural bends of the wood) and these cracks will ultimately weaken the dried shafts.
Heat treating wood, to fix a bend, is also made brittle; this makes a weak spot in your shaft which will reduce service life.
Select saplings of the right diameter and ones free of many bends and sharp kinks before it’s cut down. Waste is something we avoid when taking a life, and know the waste if the tree finishes unsuitable for the shaft.
You want a strong, robust, heavy hard wood shaft with few branch knots on the shaft (like cherry, saskatoon, or ash); this will reduce the necissary diameter of your shafts - a quality you want. Knots will be areas of extreme weakness.
Select more overly mature shoots than "just right" sized ones which at this point are still wet, bark covered ones which thin out when water is removed. After harvesting, delicately bend the harvested wood shoot using a shaft wrench ( which is a stick, bone, or section of antler with a hole drilled through; this hole should be big enough that it can accommodate the diameter of the knock end of a finished arrow) without heat. Take care not to break the delicate fibers of the raw shoot, much.
Generally a tipped arrow can come from a younger shoot; however, always use the narrow end as your nock, the heavier end as the tip. I used to nock on the root end to - save a more mature tree - but now choose these more mature saplings for my shafts and nock on the leaf end as you should have a front heavy arrow; avoid practice where it is easy to loose an arrow shaft. If you don't loose these shafts, they will last a very long time, through tough hits; believe me, they aren't anything like delicate cedar shafts you buy on line.
A less realized reality of front heavy, root end first shafts, are the ability to stay true with small sharp tips, whose weight may be not enough to maintain a front heavy shaft otherwise. In other words, use the wood to add mass to the front and overall weight of a shaft.
Rough cut to length, then debark if you have time before the next step. Hone a good blade, and train your hand to slice away the bark. I have tried a potatto peeler and moctocun but prefer the knife for debarking. Work down the wood on the fat end so the full length of shaft is the same (or fat only in the middle) and just wider than the desired finnished diameter through the length. You can save the bark for tea, bark tan liquor, or shavings for a fire or smoke for hide smudge.
If you don't de bark the shoot before the next step, the shoots will take quite long to dry. Don't worry about making the shaft perfectly round when debarking and reducing with your slices; it will be rounded later, when dry, using a rasp, knife at 90 degrees and or file.
Neatly and tightly, spiral wrap the bundle of shoots with a great number of spirals. Store like this; to do this, make one end flat even and tight of the bundle, tighten this with your cord; as you wrap the bundle up, lift the shafts up, or "untagle" and alighn them in their place in the bundle.
It is important to always spiral wrap an unfinished arrow shaft. At all steps, particularly after de barking and during any time the wood is drying.
Insure that the shafts are true up the length of the bundle (straight, not overlaping).
Typically, you reduce the wood to just near the end desired diameter with you knife. Later, when dry, the shafts are rounded with a rasp, then run a 90 degree knife over the whole shaft to round. The knock is cut into the narrow end, then the base of the groove is smoothed with a thin round fine file.
The diameter of the shaft will determine arrow "spine". Too thin (or under spined), the shaft will bend and wobble if there are any imperfections in your cast and or the straightness of your arrow shaft. If the head is too heavy, these imperfections will be exploited to a greater or lesser degree. If the shaft is "over spined" or too thick, the previous imperfections are no longer an issue, however, the shaft will be detrimentally and unnecessarily heavy and thus loose range potential, speed, penetration, and make manipulation of multiple arrows unnecessarily challenging.
The reduction of the wood for your shaft is a focus of importance. You need to find the sweet spot based on the natural characteristics of the shoot, bow strength, and weight of the arrow tip.
A note on grooving, which is to carve three or four lines down the shaft from end to end: don't bother.
A final surface finish step is to use your arrow wrench and run it down the shaft vigorously, multiple times; this will "burnish" the surface and give it a smooth shine. Not nessissary for practice shafts.
The key to making your own effective arrows is the ability to make straight shafts.
When spiral wrapped, if they were not wrapped straight before drying, soak the shafts over night or a few hours, bend a little, gently to straight and spiral wrap again true. Bend the bundle straight, let dry in the sun, overn a fire, or in the air for a few days - they will dry straight. Like leaving a shaft in the rain - infact a way of soaking your shafts - a resoaked shaft becomes extremely easy to bend and straighten.
To make the shafts perfectly straight, use a solid stationary rock with a groove. Appy pressure to the apex of the bent area counter to the curve, rubbing back and forth gently.
For tips or another option, drill a hole into the butt end of an antler with a long handle. Hold the bend over heat and gently bend out of the curve as the wood softens. Hold the bend straight until the wood will hold its self.
Heat slowly. Apply heat 4 inches from the flame for half a minute or more. You want hot through, not scorched on the surface and cool in the core.
Heat applied responsibly in the above way should be used all the time when fixing the minor bends left from straightening. Heat not only makes bends last longer, but softens the wood so bends can safely be made without damaging the wood.
If you happen to harvest a shaft with a sharp kink, just streight the rest and leave the kink.
Re spiral wrap the shafts until ready to use.
If you are making shafts in the field the process is somewhat different. First select, cut, debark and rough shave to begin drying immediately. Rough rasp and wrap with a rag or cord. After two days, straighten with a fire; shaft should still be pretty wet at this point. You can cut the knock now too. I have a saw to cut a v shape, then use the side of my rasp and the thick finger choill I made in my knife to saw into the deep knock groove in the v. Wrap again until dry and finish as above.
