I've been on ytube and found vids of people making arrow shafts and it looks easy. Has anybody done this? If you have do you think i could use my old Maple pool sticks to make a heavy strong shaft? I shoot maple now and was just wandering. Thanks!!

I made a doweling jig from plans in an article in Trad Bowhunter magazine. It worked very well.It used a router under the jig and you fed the stock through chucked up in a drill.It made some really nice Doug fir shafts.

Don't know about the pool sticks?

I use a" shaftshooter ".It makes 3/8s squares into 23/64s shafts.Good unit.They key is you have to have good wood to start with.It works like Goshawkin says.The maker is a really good guy.

I use a dowel and tennon cutter with a pipe guide on the output side a it spins out great 3/8 dowels an then have a peice of pipe cut down to do a full taper so 23/64 to 5/16 works great

I made a dowel jig with a router, Plans found in a woodworking website,& its making great shafts. I'm making 11/32 poplar (tulipwood) that are spining about 45 to 55#. I'm also running 5/16 shafts that run about 35#. Working on some Douglas fir but they're not coming out as nice as the poplar.
Oh, I built a spine tester today, also. You need one if you're making your own dowels.

Use the Verita double cut dowel maker.  Bit expensive but works great.  It's my buddy's and he made and sold enough shafts to pay for 2x over.

I too used to engulf every article in TB Magazine and saw the one on shaft jigs Sure enough I made one and still have some of the Doug Fir shafts I made. The jig did an excellent job ,only problem was local supply was expensive and most of it extremely tight grained which threw my spines through the roof. Seems like I ended up near 5/16 before I hit my target spine weights. Also I found it very important to check feed side as sometimes you have tearout when starting and have to turn blank around to avoid destroying shaft .

By the way the spine tester also came from an article in TB Magazine  and has served me well.

When building woodies I always  check spine 4 ways 90 degrees apart .It would surprise you how much really goes into a truly matched set of arrows!!