spruce shafts

[Steve Capps]

#2292

Anybody have any experience with spruce shafts? Got a dozen last week and I’m not very impressed so far. The grain is pretty rough which presented some painting challenges. My main problem is that my trusty old tapering tool doesn’t work on them. Rather than peeling off nice shavings the wood wants to rip away in fibrous chunks. Any suggestions short of buying a new tool?

[Stephen Graf]

#8417

You have discovered the one thing “wrong” with spruce. You have to sand the tapers on.

There is an expensive taper sander that runs about $170 but is the top-o-the-line answer to it. Or there is the $10 answer that requires some work on your part. Both are available from 3Rivers.

The $10 answer is a board that has a groove cut in for both the nock and point taper angles. You use it in conjunction with a sander.

I bought one and rigged it up to use with my belt sander. My sander table is hard to clamp things to so it didn’t work really well for me. After I committed to wood arrows I just bought the expensive taper sander.

But if you have some time it wouldn’t be that hard to build a jig to make the $10 option work either.

[David Petersen]

#10251

My experience–as a compulsive “try every possible arrow wood” experimenter–echoes Steve’s. And I must add that SS, like every other softwood I’ve tried, just can’t stand up to a heavy broadhead and a heavy bone impact, aka elk, even with a 3″ external sleeve for reinforcement (it just moves the break point back). But for whitetails and turkeys, should be no problem. But then, for whitetails and turkeys, assuming you cling tenaciously to the light broadhead (125) and softwood “that’s enough with a well-places shot” tradition, I see no advantage of any softwood over good old cedar … except for the growing challenge of finding consistent-quality cedar shafts. But then, I see no advantage of any softwood over most hardwoods or carbons. As always, all discussion of “best arrows and broadheads” comes down to whether our loyalty goes to traditional and what we’re used to, or “taking no chances” on a wounding loss due to inadequate gear set-up. (OKN, WYKWTTRT.)

[DK]

#10253

There is a guy on YouTube who makes his own fence for tapering on a sander. I built one it works really well. I will see if I can hunt up the vid tomorrow.

[Steve Capps]

#10303

Thanks for the input guys. I guess I now have a justification for “another” new tool. Too bad I don’t have the cash. 🙁 Guess these are destined for the corner of the shop for awhile. I’ll get around to them one of these days.

I got them because I wanted some lighter woodies for a couple of nfaa shoots this summer.

[Fletcher]

#29002

STC, I’m just outside of Springfield. If you can get them to me, I’ll cut and taper them for you.

[Steve Capps]

#29217

Thanks Fletcher. Sent you a pm.

[grumpy]

#29657

What a nice offer!!!!

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