Well I've been feeling caged up with the weather up here, rain every day, work duties and my never ending family responsibilities. So I was at Lowes and started to think about those Poplar dowels. Took me about twenty minutes to pick a six pack, bought some dark ebony stain and a can of satin Poly.
Wasn't sure what I could come up with........Holy smokes....They Rule !!!!!!
Didn't take much at all to get them as straight as I wanted. Out of my BW PSRX, with 165gr tips they flew with a serious purpose. I say they make for some serious tree rat poison. Now if I only find some time to get after them.....One of these days. But until then, I'll be buying as many Poplar dowels as I can.

It's always nice to discover a new and better way of doing something.

This picture is of some 3/8" poplar dowels from Lowes. A friend from Canada made them for me to shoot out of my 70#ELB(80") that was made for me by a mutual Friend, also from Canada. They fly great and feel good at the loose. Glad you found them out, enjoy!
Chuck

i was just today wondering if arrows could be made from the dowels sold at lowes.interesting post and nice lookn arrows Two Tracks

QuoteOriginally posted by Two Tracks:
This picture is of some 3/8" poplar dowels from Lowes. A friend from Canada made them for me to shoot out of my 70#ELB(80") that was made for me by a mutual Friend, also from Canada. They fly great and feel good at the loose. Glad you found them out, enjoy!
Chuck

I've started a project to make my own arrows. I've into wood for 15 years and I love self nock arrows. Did you self nock and do you use plastic or some other material to protect the arrow from the string?

Aloha...  :cool:

FYI, Arrow shafts are spined, Lowes dowels are NOT.  Be VERY Careful using dowels.

Those are great -eh?  

QuoteOriginally posted by BadgerArrow:
FYI, Arrow shafts are spined, Lowes dowels are NOT.  Be VERY Careful using dowels.

The good thing about arrows from cheap dowels is you use the ultimate spine tester, your bow...If it flys well then it's spined right     If it doesn't you can ditch it or use it for another bow and it didn't cost you much.  Nothing to be careful about, just use what shoots well.  JMHO

Rattus58, My friend Jerry put a self nock on the arrows and then used some of the red thread to wrap the shaft just below the string groove to help protect from spliting.

Spine testers aren't that hard to make --- I made one out of Lego bricks and wrote an Asymptote program to draw up the dial face.

how far are you away fro me? i have all the tree rats here ya want! i live just off exit 28 of the throughway and hunt about 12 miles from there, you are welcome to join us and hunt.

I think what Paul means is that you have to be carefull about dowels from the hardware store having an imperfection or just being spined to weak.  If that is the case you could get half an arrow stabbed in your arm.  I have seen pictures and its not good.

That's what Pope and Young used in their day, buy them by the gross and sort them out. If the spine is too heavy you can adjust the spine by rotating the arrow to the right location to get the spine you need.

Yellow poplar is a great species for arrow shafts, but dowels are NOT arrow shafts. There has been no selection for straight grain and defects. You must be VERY careful with dowels for safety's sake. Just shooting them without spine testing and careful inspection for grain runout and defects is asking for trouble.

When making Superceder shafts from poplar, we had a recovery rate after manufacturing loss and inspection of only about 10% of the wood we bought. The rest went to sawdust and scrap. The same is true of any species. A wood arrow shaft is the most highly stressed wood product that I can imagine, and they must be essentially perfect to make good, safe arrows.

Please be careful.

Ditto to what Don and others have said about being careful.You have to watch out for grain run-out. I have also had dowels break in my hands with just a simple flex.

  That being said,if you are selective and can get your hands on a spine tester you can make up a nice bunch of arrows.

                      Good Shoooting,
                                 Craig

Its not like a guy can't stand there in the hardware store and pick through the dowel bin for the straightest-grained ones. I mean, who in the world would simply walk in, grab a fistful of dowels, and head to the checkout? Just leave the ones with grain runout for the ladies to do crafts with.

A friend gave me 6 hand selected dowels from Lowe's he had planned to make arrows from but never got around to it.

First I spine tested them and found them to be around 90# spine, these were 3/8" dowels. Next I barrel tapered them, this brought the spine down to about 75#. I then started sanding the middles to bring them down to 55-60 spine.

This was a very labor intensive experiment but when I was finished I had some absolutely great arrows that weighed between 605 and 685 grains.

I still have two of the six after about 6 years of shooting. If you like to piddle around with things, making arrows out of dowels is do-able but I wouldn't put that amount of time in 6 arrows again.

For 50-60 lb spine, I found 5/16" dowel rods to work pretty good.  Follow previous poster warnings and they should work out well.  I use to buy them by the case (100 qty) from a local craft store.  I would group them by weight and spine.  I got a surprising amount of usable arrows out of a case.

I bought a box of 100 3/8" birch dowels (also a box of 5/16") a few years ago.  I seem to remember losing about half to defects or runouts, but the rest were/are very solid shafts.  They all spined right in the 90# range, which isn't a problem for my bows and draw length.  Just a quick taper on the tail end and they were ready to go - no different than any other shafts I buy except not $30 a dozen    
There was a bit larger spine range in the 5/16" dowels: 35-55# with most being around 45#.  Again I lost about 1/2 to defects.

Guys, a word of caution:
I've used various dowels for years for squirrel arrows.(Cincinnati dowel is only an hour away) Put some serious bend in each one on a flat surface and then rotate it 360 degrees. Some dowels have knots and grain runout that is not visible. You want to break them before you ever make an arrow that could split in the bow upon release.
Making arrows and equipment from available suff is part of the fun of Traditional archery.