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Snake dogwood shafts

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BowEd:
The title is'nt because they are wiggly or snaky though.The dark charcoal grey/white speckeled ones represent the black speckeled king snake and the natural ones with a little cambium left on the have the colors of the copperhead snake.
48 to 49 spine weighing from 551 to 599 grains with 125 grain field tips and 30" long TTT.9/32" nock and 23/64" tip.4" long parabolic shaped feathers.
A lot of the variance in grain weight is due to how soon it gets to 23/64" thick towards the tip.In other words one will have a slight more weight up front than another.Overall they have a FOC percentage of around 13%.

Trapper Rob:
Those turned out nice

BowEd:
Thanks Rob.
To keep all these different shoot shafts identified in 3" tubes I've gone to color coding them by their feathers.2 reds and a white are dogwoods/2 yellows and a white ocean spray/2 green and a white multiflora rose/2 blue and a white bamboo/2 white and a green hill cane etc....Oh yea 2 barred turkey wing and a turkey tail privet.

BowEd:
The time consuming process  mostly for me making shoot shafts is the reducing spine process.I use the spin them in a drill process while keeping the  natural full length taper on them.Although you can make parrallel shafts with them if you want and they will still shoot fine.
You kinda want to sneak up on your spine slowly much like tillering bows to desired draw weight.
If shoot is oversized after being dried and the bark removed I'll start out with 60 grit to get within 5#'s of my intended spine.Go down to 80 grit then 100 grit then 220 grit for final sanding.By then usually all major sanding scratches will be removed.
You should have a spine tester to do this but not totally necessary.It can be done more quickly though I've found.
I made my spiner for $20.00.

From this book which cost $30.00.There are many other projects in there though which are very useful.Overall though buying a spiner will cost well over $100.00.
I've made dozens and dozens of arrows with that $50.00 investment and the pay back will keep rising the more I make.

I grain weigh them also while I'm reducing.There will be a grain weight that the finished ones generally fall into on the certain species your making shafts from.Once that is achieved I start to spine test them.That grain weight usually is about 50 grains more than a finished one is.
The work is not done yet though of course.Field tip needs to be glued on.Self nock cut in and then wrapped.Bare shaft shot.Then finally fletched.

Buckskinner:
You have a great process there and excellent results.  I'm going to have to build a similar spine tester...

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