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Black Walnut arrow footings?

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markinengland:
When I have done footings I have used a block plane for the shaft itself which leave s avery flat smooth finish. A saw cut up the footing and reasonably well matched glue colour comes out looking good.
My bandsaw is about the smallest cheapest one available and gives me acceptable results.
Mark in England

Muina:
I use Sam Harper's method of footing arrows, using a belt sander to shape the wedge and a bandsaw to cut the slot (There's a video somewhere on Youtube, just search "How I make my arrows" and look for Sam).

When I used the metal cutting blade on my latest attempt they didn't look as bad once they were rounded off. But you can still certainly see a little bit of the rough cut. I'm thinking if I maybe do the same thing as I do with my self nocks and finish it off with a small flat file or a diamond coated hacksaw blade they'll be a lot smoother.

But firstly I'm going to do a little experiment with my old Titan bandsaw (just so I don't risk damaging my monstrous Metabo :P), if I grind down the set slightly on the blade it could make for a smoother cut because there's more of an edge cutting the wood.

Like I say though, just an experiment. I'll see if I can get a couple of pictures up once I'm done with it, my camera's charging at the moment.

Thanks for all your help.

Muina

Muina:
Ok, I just had a reply on Youtube about achieving a smoother cut. Apparently this guy does exactly what I was going to try to get a much smoother cut.

He puts a sharpening stone on the side of the bandsaw blade while it's running and also rounds of the back to reduce wear on the bandsaw.

I haven't actually been able to try this yet because my little Titan bandsaw's completely bust (I never trusted it really) but now I know it's ok to do I'll be doing it on my big bandsaw.

I'll post about the results very soon.

Muina

Muina:
I did it, admittedly i did it a bit too much and blunted the blade :P :D but the results were absolutely incredible! let's just say that if I ripped a veneer off with that surface finish it'd need aboslutely zero sanding, absolutely glass smooth!

The pictures I took looked no different from each other, but I really am surprised by this.

So now I've just gotta get used to doin it the right amount without blunting the blade... could take a while :P

Thanks for everyone's help in this, I hope there's some information locked in one of these posts that'll help everyone else, it helped me.

Muina

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