I love wood arrows, but they can drive a person nuts if you let them. I never know how straight is straight enough? I am always reading about guys just sighting down the arrows while straightening. I roll mine on a piece of glass while looking at eye level. I may use heat, compression, hand straightening, or a combination. I don't want to admit how long I have spent trying to get some shafts what I consider straight, but it is probably bordering on ridiculous. It does seem like my really straight shafts fly that much better than the rest, but maybe I am just trying to justify all the time spent. How particular is everyone about straightness? How do you judge your shafts to be straight enough? Let's just assume for now that all your arrows are correct and consistent in spine. Spine is a whole other thread.
i spin mine on my thumbnail. it's an old habit.
if they sit there and spin it's good to go. if they hop and move forward or backward i look at them and straighten till they spin right.
I want my woodies to spin like carbons or aluminums and I can get most of them that way. However, I am starting with very straight grained cedar. Those I can't get that straight I save for stumping or practice. Quite often, cedar will shoot itself straight. The flexing of the shaft from repeated shooting tends to straighten them.
Once straight, my arrows tend to stay straight, unless I do something to bend them, like carry my bow (and bow quiver filled with arrows) under my arm pressed against my body as I still hunt. Do this all day, and the arrows will usually end up with a gentle bend, more so with hardwoods than cedar. I just straighten those in the field by hand bending in the opposite direction.
It's tough to make a shaft straight if you don't have good material to start with. The cedar shafts I have I've hand selected over the past 30 years. Simply can't get that quality now in cedars. However, Surewood shafts makes the consistently straightest wood (Doug fir) shafts I've seen. Good luck.
I spin them on the palm of my hand, with a fieldtip on. Itake them between indexfinger and thumb and spin them. If they don't wobble, they are okay!
If they wobble I search for the bent on a glass table and bent them till they are okay.
Patrick,
As long as the nock and the point are in line with each other, what happens in between doesn't matter all that much.
That being said, if I have a wood arrow in my hand, I am fiddling with it. I'm like you; they are never "straight enough".
I spend a lot of time on the raw shafts, straightening and smoothing out the kinks and bumps with opposite pressure and sometimes heat. After I stain and seal them, again straighten and smooth. When I finish cap dipping and cresting the shafts, I do more straightening, then again after fletching. I have been known to ignore deer while sitting in my stand because I am busy hand straightening an arrow or two. No, I am NOT obsessed!
I have no idea how straight is straight enough. I do know that within my self imposed range of 20 yards, (with wood arrows anyway) I am consistent on a target enough to be confident in the field after game. I have a dozen ash shafts that are still in the raw. I've had them for two years now and one day expect to have them straight enough to move on to the next step.
I don't use glue-on points anymore. The poor fit of the glue-on points accounted for more loss in accuracy than most of the bend, curve or kink that is left in the shaft. I leave the end un-tapered and epoxy on a short length of aluminum arrow with an insert. That way I can use screw-in points and broadheads.
Even carbon shafts aren't perfectly straight. I guess straight enough for wood shafts is when you get tired of fooling with them or they go where you want them to out of the bow. I settle for the latter.
OkKeith
I check mine on a spinner,I like to get my woods as straight as possible.I believe the straightest part should be on the nock end.It just takes alittle practice to get your technique down on get them straight.
As you've probably already found out, hardwoods are usually less straight than softwoods like spruce, fir and cedar. I don't find hardwoods any more difficult to straighten, but they seem to require more re straightening than softwoods.
I agree with OK re the nock and point. The big thing there is getting accurate tapers. I haven't found a hand held tool yet that yields accurate tapers. A jig and a power sanding disk is the only way I can get accurate tapers every time.
You know how a lot of times when averaging things you throw out the high and low. Well I am going to be the low on this post. Most people that spin my homemade shafts on there hands get this look and make some kind of remark about their straightness or lack there of. That being said when I do what I am supposed to do the arrows go where I am looking. I am not the best shot but outshoot those skeptics quite often. I am a as long as it goes where I am looking it can wobble some if it wants kind of archer. Now I do spin test my hunting shafts and get them to spin as CLOSE as possible to perfect.
Pack,
I like to get mine as straight as possible as well and use every method you mentioned to do so. Do yourself a favor and order a dozen premium Surewood shafts - it will make your life sooooo much easier :-)
If you want to see a crooked arrow, try shooting some Tonkin cane arrows. But the funny thing is if the knock spins OK even with wobble of the shaft, the arrow flies true. Best thing is try to get as straight as you can...then shoot 'em. Cull out the ones that just don't shoot well...Doc
I save the realy nice one for broadheads, the others for everyday shooting. You can get away with alot shooting field points.
Eric
I'm obsessive about getting them straight, but it's really not that critical. Once upon a time I got paranoid about them, and as a test I deliberately bent my broadhead arrows (160 Snuffers) and shot them at 20 yards. The looked kind of funny in flight, but hit where I was aiming. That cured my paranoia.
If you make your own ya' might as well be religious about all aspects of arrow making-including tapers and shafts-as good as you can reasonably get them.
An extra bit of effort will get you lots of satisfaction later when shooting.
You guys would not believe how crooked a shaft can be and still fly true. As Tippit mentioned about the tonkins, I have some that you can not spin on your fingers that shoot in the same holes as my carbons.
This is good advise from Doc and is the way I do it.
"Best thing is try to get as straight as you can...then shoot 'em. Cull out the ones that just don't shoot well...Doc"
The way I shoot, a good crook in the shaft tends to help :)
I used to have an arrow that was so bent it looked like it was pointing off to the next county at full draw.
That arrow was the most accurate arrow I had.
That said, when I make arrows for people I get them as straight as I possibly can. I use a spinner to check them and typically use compression to correct as necessary. I put the nock on the best end. The only time I've had a complaint was from a woman who didn't know a lot about archery and compared her new wood arrows to the carbons she started with. Once she actually shot them she didn't say anything more.
Guy
I like to get mine to near calibrated straight edge as I can.Then I spin test them on the spin tester on top of my arrow saw and get the best ones for BH's.
Surewoods are the way to go if you're striaghtening challenged.Very little required with them I've found. :thumbsup:
The worst I've ever had was poplar.POC is decent.Lam birch wasn't too bad either.
Take a look at bamboo, they still fly amazin! Dick !!!
Good Old ramin is a Shaft You can just beat yourself to Death over!! As long as the "DogLegs are Minimal, and there arent and Sharp Bumps in either end, they shoot just Fine for Me!! Sometimes Sanding and Working them will remove the Worst of the "Crook" out of them!!
This thread has answered alot of my ? also . i started makin woodies also and am using pine. got a really good price on them and found i have to work them and they are never really perfect but they hit where i am aiming.
Thanks for all the replies. It is good to know that there are others who struggle with getting them as straight as they want, even though as many have stated wood arrows have a tendency to fly well even when much less than perfect. I guess we get them as straight as we can and then shoot them to see which ones are really going to go where we point them.
How does that Old Saying Go? "Somedays You are the Bug, and Some Days You are The Windshield!!" :thumbsup: :archer2:
My brother, who was a pretty good physicist, said it has to do with the rotating center of mass. All the mass in tubular shafts is in the shell, which makes them much more sensitive to straightness. Solid woodies have the mass equally distributed through the cross section, making them naturally less sensitive to straightness.
I'll be checking straightness of four dozen this morning, to send off to a fellow tradganger. I spin them on my thumbnail and sight down them. I never use a tool, just bend them over the heel of my hand. After a few thousand, it comes naturally. :)
The best thing you can do for the ones that don't want to stay straight is shoot them. The flexing tends to stress-relieve them, and settle them down.
Before my dear old dad passed away, he made me a spinner out of solid oak. The wheels spin true as a handmade spinner can. I've made hundreds of arrows using this device. To be honest I have no idea how you'd make a good wooden shaft w/out one. I have even straightened aluminum using the thing. Once I straighten a cedar arrow and seal it, its there. Never straighten it again unless I hit something w/ it. (And that is too seldom to admit. LOL)
Sometimes compression is necessary but most often looking at the wow and laying it across the palm and heel of your hand as its being flexed does the trick for me.
Never taper until the arrow is as straight as its going to get. That's where most of us mess up. Crooked tapers can hurt the final product.
That being said. Most of us can't shoot w/in the tolerances anyway. So if it works for you....its straight enough.
I used to think my arrows were straight until I actually measured the run-out with my dial indicator AAE high-dollar $$$$$ arrow straightener. They looked straight but they were really all over the place, +/- 0.010, 0.025".
I can spend a lot of time straightening them on the AAE, then I shoot them, pull them out of 3-D targets, they get 'crooked', I re-straighten them, and so it goes. It's actually a pain in the arse, measuring and knowing they're 'crooked' and now I just do it the old way, sighting down the shaft, straightening by hand, and calling it a day. They fly good enough and now & then I hit a few 10's :D
Just straighten by hand, roll them on a piece of plate glass to speed up the process, trust your eyes and go shoot the buggers.
I still don't know how straight "straight enough" is, but I put more effort into making the shafts straight than any other part of the arrow making process. I check my shafts with a very good spinner, and if I can see a wobble, it isn't straight enuf. The shaft is the heart of the arrow; there's nothing I can do to make up for a crooked shaft.
From the raw shaft to the finished arrow, my shafts are straightened multiple times. The most critical time is when the nock and point tapers are put on. If the shaft is truly straight at this point, and the nock and point tapers are put on straight, the finished arrow will always shoot well, even if it isn't perfectly straight. The next most critical straightening is when broadheads are put on. The broadheads MUST spin true for the best accuracy, especially the big ones.
I check straightness every time I shoot them, and automatically check them every time I pick them up out of long habit, whether they need it or not. I also inspect used arrows for flaws, because an unnoticed flaw can cause the arrow to break.
Call it obsession, but knowing my arrows are in good shape increases my confidence, and I have one less thing to distract me from making the shot. Archery is 90% mental, so everything I do to increase my confidence improves my odds of hitting the target.
How straight is straight enough? Straight enough that you are confident that the arrow will go where it's aimed.
I believe the most critical factor in arrow flight is nock allignment and I check this visibly with a spin tester on the edge of a work table with a straight edge. Shafting can be made reasonably straight by normal sight down the shaft and hand stightening methods but If anyone doubts the critical nature of nock allignment, take a perfectly straight shaft and grind the nock taper off just a tiny bit on purpose and install a nock the same way and then try to get it to fly straight.
I straighten by rolling the shaft on my kitchen table and do each batch 3 times. By then they are as straight as I can get them. After finishing I install the points and check with a homemade point alignment jig.
The biggest unstraightener is other people not used to woodies pulling your arrows by not holding them up against the the target thus bending them when pulling. I just came back from a 4 day shoot and a couple had bad bends in them and I know how that happened.
There Ya Go!!Reddoge has it down!! :thumbsup: :clapper: I do the same thing with my Woodies. I work them Until the "ROLL TEST" is Smooth!! I admit, I use the ACE Straightener, that doesnt Mar the Finish, as I too Check them after Several Steps have been Completed.
After Fletching and Point Attatchment, I test them One More Time, then they Go into the Arrow Boxes to Prepare for Flight!!
We ALL get a Tad "AnalRetentive" with Our Straightening, but there comes a Time when Ya get Done, and Just Shoot the Dang Things!! :goldtooth:
"pull them out of 3-D targets, they get 'crooked',"
I used to cringe when my buddy would pull my arrows out of targets. It looked like he was reeling in a marlin! Geesh, he bent a lot of arrows.
When I shot wood I would straighten as best I could without too much effort. The best ones went for broadheads, the fairly straight ones went for target, and the worst went for stumpers. I use aluminum now and don't worry about it. Shooting better than ever too.
When pulling wooden arrrows out of targes I use this device: http://www.kustomkingarchery.com/Bearpaw-Arrow-Puller/productinfo/4705/
It is really handy, not expensice, fits all shafts and when you put it on the shaft close to the target, your arrow's will stay straight!