I welded up a dowl making jig the other day to use with a drill and router.  I'll post some pics of it in a few days.  It works pretty good and I can make shafts out of just about any wood.  

Who else out there has made a rig for making shafts from square stock?  Let's see'em.

Sounds cool...cant wait to see the pics...

This is what I use...

yeah, a friend of mine ran a bunch of my ash blank's through his router thingy and they turned out ok... for a kids bow..
a board with a groove and a planer works way better to keep consistancy in my experience anyways. i need to make one but haven't gotten around to it yet. (i always use my friends.)

I have a semi-homemade one. It started as a commercial doweler designed to make fluted dowels for glued joints. My brother figured out how to make it make smooth dowels (the same day the manufacturer told us it couldn't be done!). I have heads for it for all sizes of shafts, from 5/15 to 25/64. We used it and a custom tapering machine to make the Superceder shafts.

PICS...      :D

Pat B do you just use that to cut dowels down or do you make arrows out of wood strips?  Do you have to be real carefull picking wood with grain lines a certain way?  I would like to try something like that but don't want half an arrow sticking in my arm.  I love when people show you a simple cheap way to do something that you never thought you could.

I use this primarily for hardwood shoot shafts to reduce their thickness and to adjust spine. I have used it with white pine and yellow poplar square stock to make them round and to reduce the thickness so it is appropriate for arrows.
  Start with 3/8" square stock and remove the four corners, then remove the resulting 8 corners. At this time the stock is almost round and that can be accomplished by sanding.
It is quite simple but more time consuming that a dowel maker but I think I have only $8 invested in the thumb plane.
 You do have to hand pic your stock to insure good grain but you also have to with a dowel maker.
  If I'm not mistaken, George Tsoukalas has info on his website for hand making arrows and I think white pine is one of his choices for arrow wood.

What is George's website Pat?
This is something that I would like to do.

Zack

I don't have the link to George's site now but maybe someone else does or perhaps George himself will post it for you. Sorry!

Here is the link to George's site...
http://georgeandjoni.home.comcast.net/~georgeandjoni/

Well, here it is.

I'm still messing with the design.  As of now, it makes 23/64 shafts from half inch square stock.  I can make a shaft in about 30 seconds, start to finish.  Talk about a money saver!  I made some fir shafts the other day that will probably spine around 70 lbs and weigh about 800 grains a pop.  

 

 

I use a router and jig, after the router the shaft runs through a sanding block. The shafts turn out pretty slik. At first shafts were a little rough. I had to add a block all the way accross the router to keep down wobble.

OK, here's mine. It's been on here before, but...

That thing is freeking sweet!  I like yours better.  

What size shafts can you make?  Do you have to change the out bushing if you want to make shafts much smaller than what it's set up for now?  

ch

Way to go Clay! I have Jim's instructions and all the stuff but haven't put one together just yet. I may be calling on you for help.