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Doc Nock
    Post count: 1150

    This should be fun to watch. Where’s the beer and popcorn??

    There are such die-hard wood users that it will likely get “interesting”.

    I find it somewhat moot to argue the traditional aspects of wood arrows if shooting composite bows…self bows, by all means… Have at it!8)

    When I started out, I started with hard, tough ash shafting. I could NOT put a nock point or head point taper on those bloody things without borrowing my buddy’s “Woodchuck” sanding rig.

    Ash was a bear to straighten. I got some RRA (the older couple) standing dead cedar that were heavy (23/64 tapered to 5/16) and they took almost the same abuse as ash!

    Back in those days you had to buy a 100 cedar shafts to get a good 2 dozen or less. Now top arrow makers lament to me it takes 1000 shaft lots to find a couple dozen good, matched straight grained arrows!

    I made the transition to carbon. Either straight or broken. Been that way since.

    Nothing wrong with wood, but I’d rather shoot than build. I don’t have spine tester, taper tools, and spinners, so carbon just works for me. They’re not purdy, but the deer they have killed haven’t complained that I noticed…!

    Carbon, we used to tease back to our wood supporters, is just really, really old wood! 😀

    They’re not perfect (carbon) as some who built competition arrows would still spine and spin, and weigh every shaft in a dozen and find that often the dozen had ones that were out of spine or weight… so they’d cull and keep boxes till they would get a dozen similar for their competition shooters.

    Consequently, I now tune EACH and EVERY arrow individually… cutting each one from full length a skosh at a time. I keep records and even have numbered shafts to ensure it’s not me.

    Do as you see fit. I just didn’t have the budget to buy pre-built good wood, and I can whip out a set of carbon’s in decent time, once I bare shaft the shafts and am ready to fletch…then check tune again. I leave a 1/4″ extra at the back where I fletch so if some cutting is necessary (blade width on the cut off tool) I can do it pulling the nock out to cut. I also like being able to switch out weight of inserts, add over footings of alum to strengthen the lighter weight target shafts, (keep total weight down while getting EFOC) and shift point weights till I find that silver bullet, as it were.

    I’ve even shot 3 different deer with the same arrow…just washed the fletch, dried and steamed it and re-sharpened the removable head on my KME and killed another next year!

    Each his own. What floats one’s boat will sink another or make them think they’re running a garbage scow. To each his own.