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Medieval arrow shaft production methods

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burtonridr:
I posted this in the arrows forum, but it was suggested I post it here because this is where all the medieval experts hangout  ;D

I'm trying to figure out how they made arrows, as far as splitting, drying, shaving, nock inserts, etc. They must of had a system and fairly good hand tools to mass produce all the war arrows. I cant imagine they cut out square stock from logs, they must have been split, but how? How would you do it efficiently? I've read about making shakes and they always tend to bevel from one side to the other, would this be true with splitting a 1/2" thick 30" long "shake" to start with? Does the type of splitting blade or metal thickness help create a more parallel and consistent split? Is it better to split the shafts or shakes when wet, or season the wood first?

Sorry, lots of questions I know... I cant seem to find anything searching online, maybe I'm not using the right search terms? Any help in the right direction or answers would be greatly appreciated.

Del the cat:
Bottom line... no one knows.
BUT
There are well known tools used for splitting, billhook, axe, froe etc.
It's not too hard to split squarish lengths and then plane 'em round on a shooting board. Or were some made from round shoots, do you mean mass produced war arrows or those made by the archer for his own use?
Exactly how it was done and by whom isn't known. Did one bloke harvest and season the wood, another bloke split 'em? Were they worked green?
Doubtless there will be some armchair experts who will know exactly how it was done and doubtless even know the blokes names ;)
Del

JNystrom:
Come on Del... I've got to know your beef, but I don't agree with you that there is any stubborn "know it all" guys around. What i have found in archery circles that there are quite down to earth guys who experiment and know their stuff, but still are open for discussion. Lets keep it that way and don't bring ever lasting arguments wherever we go.

I personally do all my arrows by splitting with axe (worlds best, Finnish one  ;)), then drying, sawing to square 1"x 1" and hand planing them to ready shafts. For obvious reasons can't think of a much better way to do it. Aspen planes easily, so does pine and other softwoods. They also split really cleanly. We in Finland have this tradition of making baskets out of fresh spruce. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LFTC1WpNNM
You can see that at least with spruce you can do really extremely efficient and accurate splitting.

If you look at the practice purely by interest in quality and speed, making arrows one part on a time, the process will be faster. Someone harvests, someone splits, someone planes etc. We have a hyper efficient industry all around us to remind what is the most fastest way to produce items.

Del the cat:
@JNystrom
I did add a " ;)" I just get a bit jaded sometimes.
The guys on here are great... it's really the "how did they do it in medieval times" questions that irritate a bit.
Maybe I'm just a grumpy pedant, but we just don't know and I've seen so many bad experimental archaeology programs on TV it drives me nuts.
I'll go and sit on the naughty step....  :(
Baaaad kitty
Del  :-[

burtonridr:
Ha! I didn't realize that question would strike a nerve with anyone lol  ;D

I find it interesting though that we have so much more information about native American and archery from other cultures, some of which had no written records. But very little from medieval times.

The whole question in my head spawned from coming across the "rose mary" (mary rose?) information about the hundreds of arrows in the archaeological find. I saw a figure that they would have thousands of arrows for a single battle, and I thought "holy crap, how did they manufacture so many good quality arrows"? I just figured if anyone knew, or even had a clue, it would be someone here. Its mostly to satisfy my curiosity, but also because they made good arrows and it would be neat to learn about what there methods were.

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