I just bought a dozen POC shafts the other day online and they have some little areas with pitch like residue on the surface. Not every shaft has it, but maybe 8 of 12 have it on them.  All the POC I've had in the past never had these sticky spots.

Anybody ever dealt with this before staining? I thought about taking a fine sandpaper and going over them, or maybe steel wool.  

Any suggestions or advice on prepping these shafts?

Thanks, Ron

I wipe mine down with denatured Alcohol, then if needed sand with a green scrub pad.

Thanks, I give that a try!

Yep.  I do the same thing as BadgerArrow.  Your shafts are likely old stock, 30 years or more.  Fairly common for some of the "pitch" to work its way to the surface after many years.  You may not be able to get all of it off, and/or the areas under the spots may then be lighter.  They clean up pretty well though and a stain usually hides most of the blemishes.  Good luck.

Treekiller,

If these are old "Acme" shafts what you are seeing could be the lubricating agent that the Acme process used in the burnishing process to give their shafts a "mirror" finish.  AFter a long period of time that agent may get sticky.  Just a thought.

I'm not sure you guys are correct. Cedar shafts started getting "sappy" when the Asians started to buy up all the old seasoned cedar that was used to make shafts. As "greener" cedar was taking the place of the aged cedar the sap was a recurring phenomenon. As the shafts/wood ages this problem does  not occur. If you have the pitch you have newly harvested wood. When you go to Home Depot or Lowes to get lumber you can tell the lumber that is still pretty green...it has a great deal more sap on it than properly seasoned wood.

I agree totally Bill.

Just one of many reasons I stopped using POC.

I guess there's sap and then there's sap.  Difficult to say whether your shafts are new and oozing sap, or old with sap or a lubricating agent eventually making its way to the surface.  Would need to see them to determine which it is.  I've been shooting POC for 50 years, and I have some 30 year old shafts (that I bought myself 30 years ago) that seem to exhibit the kind of sap spotting you're talking about. I should add that none of the 25 dozen or so POC shafts I've bought in the past 10 years have exhibited any sap spotting.

Thanks for all the input guys. I have a bunch of POC I bought myself 25 years ago, and quite a few shafts an old friend gave me that I'm pretty sure are close to 40-50 years old (since he bought them). I'm making some arrows for a friend and didn't have any 11/32 in his weight, so I ordered some.  I tried talking him into some nice doug fir shafts, but he wanted POC!  

I'll give them the alcohol and sandpaper treatment and report back.  

Thanks!    

Cedar shaft quality started going downhill several years ago. The sap was really bad on the last couple orders I bought. The shafts were actually stuck together. I finally had enough and switched to alum a year ago. Should have done it a long time ago.

Just a technicality- POC shafts are all heartwood, so what you're seeing is pitch, rather than sap. Sap is only in sapwood!

I agree with Bill- this is probably fresh stuff. Before the spotted owl controversy, POC shafts were harvested from snags and downed logs that were left behind after the live old-growth trees were cut. The dead logs may have been lying there for a hundred years. When old-growth cutting was restricted to "save" the owls, the POC producers were left with live timber from second-growth stands. It's different.

I had some old shafts like that and used a pocket knife as a scraper holding the blade 90 degrees to the shaft surfaceas I scraped.  It worked good.

After the alcohol rub down use shellac to seal them before adding your decorations and finish. Shellac will cover the sticky surface and prevent more from coming to the surface. Almost anything will stick to the shellac so adding another finish shouldn't be a problem.

I concur that the quality of POC has gone downhill.  Over the last dozen years or so, I've purchased all of my POC at large shoots where some vendors let customers pick through the shafts.  I'd often sort through a couple of hundred shafts to get a dozen with the grain I was looking for.  Perhaps I also subconsciously or consciously sorted out any that I might have come across with pitch (Thanks for the clarification, Don.) on them.  

That's why I went to Surewood doug fir shafts. I just went through 100 shafts and all of them are shooters and more durable than cedar ever was...unless it came in the form of Forgewoods!

I thought all POC was from old growth previously felled trees?

No?