DIY simple arrow holder for making barrel tapered arrows.

[Bearcat1960]

Hello everyone.I recently joined this forum and am really enjoying reading the posts. Tons of valuable knowledge on this forum. Well being new I should introduce myself with a little info about me. I'm an old guy. I've been shooting and hunting with longbows and recurves for 58 years except for a 2 month stint with a Browning Compound bow back in the early 1980's. Quickly woke up and got rid of it. LOL Although I own lots of aluminium and recently carbon arrows, I have always preferred wood shafts. I have tail tapered my shafts for many years because in my opinion they fly really good. A recent very bad health diagnosis has meant I can no longer draw my collection of recurves and longbows. I ordered a short laminated Turkish style recurve in 40# weight just so I could keep shooting. Now to the title of this thread. I found through historical research that barrelled shafts were customary for this style bow.When making arrows for it I tail tapered the shafts as usual by turning them in an electric drill and running then in my sanding jig. Tapered from 11/32 to 9/32 over 10 inches. The front taper to 5/16 over 6 inches was much more difficult. Researched extensively on the net for how to hold the small 9/32 end in the drill without damaging it. Everybody's advice was to wrap many layers of masking tape on the end of the shaft to avoid drill chuck damage. I hated that idea and needed to come up with a simple shaft holder. What I did was buy some 1/4 inch heavy rubber gas line. OD.was over 1/2 inch and wouldn't fit my chuck so I screwed a 5/16 bolt 2 inches long into a 3 inch length of the tubing and then cut off the head. Chucked it in my drill, inserted the 9/32 shaft in the other end an voila. It works so good I thought I would post it here in case someone else can benefit. Very sorry for the too long post.

[BAbassangler]

Pretty slick trick!  My brain was thinking along the lines of a makeshift collet.  Where there's a will there's a way.  I just watched a guy with 1 arm shoot with a mouth-tab! Prayers for you.

Using a thumb ring by chance?