I just recieved 100 port orford cedar shafts from a very reputable trad archery dealer. I was sorting them tonight and putting them into three piles based on grain straightness alone, i have yet to sort them by grain weight and spine.  When i was finished only 17 of the shafts were #1 according to my sorting with 50 shafts at #2 and 33 at #3.  I know that quality arrow wood is hard to come by, but can one only expect 17 shafts out of 100 to be of excellent grain and straightness?  I hate to think of how many of my top shafts will remain when weighed and spined.  Anyone out there see this problem or did i get a particularly poor batch of shafts?

I haven't bought shafts from a dealer in a while, but that sounds worse than I remember it.  Have you called the company?  I think I would and relate to them what you got when the shafts arrived.  Sorry to hear about that.

Stan

What grade of shafts were you buying? Can you return them? Speak to this 'very reputable trad archery dealer' and give them the opportunity to clear this up. I bought 2 lots of 100 shafts recently on the internet that were graded as 'premium' that means the grain follows the shaft for a minimum of 20 inches. Anyway there were 7 tomato stakes across the 200 shafts. And the rest are becoming great arrows. I had to do some straightening and they were not all the same weight but I did not pay for grain matching. The spine was bang on too.

Try Wapati Archery . They offer some very nice tapered POC shafting. They purchased Roque River Archery a little over a year ago and are producing high quality POC.

Wapiti archery is a great place for shafts----he is my new go-to guy. I just recieved a dozen tapered shafts from them and all are just great.

Top Quality Port Orford Cedar is hard, if not nearly impossible to find anymore IMO.  Due to its desirable qualities (straightness, tight grain, and disease resistance), POC has been used for a lot of the reprod on the Oregon/Washington coasts.  The reprod oustide of its native Southern Oregon and Northern California has "backfired" a bit.  The reprod harvested outside of this region has been found to be inferior, though it is the same species.  IMHO, though one purchases POC as a wood species, they normally do not know where it was harvested.

As a side note, it's a darn shame that a lot of the early POC was used as fence posts many years ago.  Think of the millions of arrows that would have brought us all today.

No kidden I agree 100%.... about 90% of wood shafts are not even good garden stakes.I did run across a guy whom had 10 dozen 60-65 11/32 from the 1950's..been stored in an arrow shaft rack ever since.I think he was sniffing me out for some kind of value and said he was going to ask 34 bucks a dozen for them as they are all with in 5 grains in weight and were bundled 60# 63# 65# pound spine and were dead on,,on my Don Adams spine tester.So 340 bucks later....I only gave away one dozen to a good friend and kept the rest for future use..If you can find any vintage shafting or even refletching old arrows is by far better then the new stuff.As mentioned above there are also several good dealers whom sell only the best of the best.bd

As noted above, top quality POC is hard to come by, but what you received is unacceptable. I'd give the dealer a chance to replace them or refund my money, but I sure wouldn't keep those.

That 20" runout standard, BTW, would have caused a shaft to be tossed in the seconds bin years ago.

Rogue River used to make exceptional shafting, and I understand that Wapiti Archery,the successor, is doing a great job, although I haven't bought any shafts from them yet.

Good luck!

Yep, ordering shafts today is a bit of a crap shoot. I have received great shafts from dealers on one order, only to receive tomatoe stakes on another order from the same dealer.

Rose City leaves much to be desired as far as quality is concerened. As much as I like POC, I am spending more time and energy on alternative shaft materials. I shot carbon all last year and must say, I loved them.

But I still love wood arrows too. Such is my dilema.

Nice screen name BrianP LOL

BP

Brian P., I thought someone just hijacked my login!!!     Brian

I just went through my stash of Rogue River and Acme shafts, there are no run out grains. All my RR shafts are 11/32 extra heavy.  The old Acmes are a batch of hand picked from a thousand lot.  I was not aware there was this much of a problem.  I need to find some different rabbit arrows at this rate, because I'm saving what I have left.

POC quality is highly variable. I would also highly recomend Wapati Archery. Dan is a great guy to deal with and he is picky about what he will call "premium". The best Cedar is upland grown, fire killed and difficult to find.

anyone try shooting any of those hex shafts or composite wood shafts. I've been thinking about trying some.

Try The Footed Shaft, his shafts are pretty darn good!

I have gone thru about 4 to 600 shafts (23/64 poc
parallel and tapered) from three rivers and custom
king and have lost very few. I have been making
arrows for myself and my son as well as a few
friends for over 16 years and either I'm not as
precise as others or I've been very lucky! I have
to straighten some but the finished arrow seem to
shoot at least as good as I'm capable of shooting
and as good as alum or corbon that I've shot. allen

Buy from a seller who offers tapering and pay to get that done.....especially double or hunting taper-why? Because a shaft has to be pretty straight to be tapered. That means the seller will do some straightening and hand select the shafts you are going to get.