Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Arrows => Topic started by: Fred Arnold on July 28, 2013, 07:56:39 pm
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Just a thought on straightening shoots. Let's here your advice and make one of you rich and famous!
Here's an idea that I've been toying with for quite some time.
Take your green shoot arrows and build straightening boards that will hold a dozen cut to between 33" and 39". Using a router finish 1X1's to hold a 7 to 10 mm shoot and track along your work bench so they won't slide up/ down. Maybe alternate every other shoot top/bottom.
Now crank it down snug and let them dry possibly rotating every few days for air circulation.
Can one of you finish off this design and build one of these. All I ask for is 1% of the royalties :laugh: and a build along posted on PA.
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I made something similar last week! But mine is for heat straightening... Works really good and puts "racing stripes" on them :laugh:
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I made something similar last week! But mine is for heat straightening... Works really good and puts "racing stripes" on them :laugh:
Hows that work out? I love red osier and it's hard to get it as straight as I like it. When the shafts are straight they shoot as good as poc just heavier and much more durable.
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Twisted:
It works great! RL Dogwood has a lot of really tight bends sometimes so for the difficult ones I put them in... Tighten and heat the whole thing with a heat gun and then let it cool and it usually tames the bends...
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Years ago when I was straightening wood shafts, I made a long straight 2X2 with a shallow V groove in it. I'd lay the shaft in the groove, through an old thin towel over it and iron it as I spun the shaft. It worked great and also burnished the shaft.
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I've often wondered about building something that would straighten shoots better and easier than I can. I have a hard
time eyeballing them when straightening them myself. Kinda like your idea Tom, seems to make sense and I might
just give it a try. Won't try to get rich off your invention/idea though, I promise. ;)
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I do it all by hand with the help of an arrow wrench or two. I usually work at our kitchen gas stove. I think one secret about straightening shoots or cane is not try to straighten the whole thing at once. Take the worst bends first(unless they are next to each other) heat and straighten then lay shoot down on a flat surface until cool. Then go back and do the same on the next worst and so on. I sometimes let shoots cool over night before straightening more. If the wood is still warm it doesn't take much force to rebend the wood back to where you started.
Once I have the shoot straight I'll start at one end and heat and rotate the shoot, moving from one end to another. With hardwood shoots(sourwood for me) this is when I add color from the heat. Heat the shoot well and keep moving to the far end. Be aware of any steam that might come out of the far end. It will scald you! ::) Once you complete this "tempering" make sure the shoot is straight then lay it flat until cold. The tempering helps to keep the shaft straight.
I usually have cut my shoots to final length by the time I temoer them.
I do sometimes use arrow wrenchs, all home made and pretty simple, for difficult bends but mostly I use my hands(use heat protection) and eyes.
ps, I don't build sets either. I will straighten a few shafts at a time but each arrow is made as a set of one for me.
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When I first start building shoot arrows. I made a straighting jig. Cut a 1/2 pipe lenth wise. Put a shoot in it. clamped the shoot in it and heated it really good the whole lenth. I'd do this a couple times. Take it out your shafes mosty straight.
But now I can just heat straighten with my hands.
But I do ,do this. I heat straighten really good with the bark on. Bundle tightly let season untill I ready to build. This way when you do debark and sand what marks you but in the shoots heating and beening are only in the bark.
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Badly Bent - Go for it! I sure as heck didn't get rich off of it! :o Remember, originality is concealing your source!
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Here's something else I do.
After I heat, straighten ,bundle. When I am ready to build my arrows I'll restaighten with heat again for the second time. Now I perty straight.
I go back and rasp all the high spots off. Now it's almost straight.
I no longer use a thumb plane to debark. Now I just rasp it off. Saves a huge amount of time.
Now I just hand sand with 60,80 grit. Down to the spine I need.
This gets rid of the last high spots you have.
But now I perty much do most of my work with a rasp. Only sanding the last step.
I start out with a bigger shoot than I need so and can leave the ends a tad bigger than the shalf. For halfing and cutting the nock end. If your spines 50#'s or more then you don't have to leave the nock end bigger. It's already big enough to cut in a nock.
Heating early and bundleing a year or so early dose 2 things.
It gets rid of memory.
When you reheat to straighten the second time. The bends you heated out the first time when you bundle. The would'nt come out when you reheat for the second straighting.
One other thing I only start with a shoots 100%. With very little or no MEMEROY. To make a shoot arrow it takes way to long to build to start out with a shoot that has any defects at all.
YOUR ARROWS ONLY AS GOOD AS THE SHOOT YOU START WITH.
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I let my shoot/shafts dry for a week or so between straightening sessions. By the time the shaft is dry enough to use it is straight. I use heat and an arrow wrench and work by eye.
I find that different sized holes drilled into a 1/4" plate make fine shaft reducers. A 1/2" hole will work as a curved plane for cleaning up the surface of a 5/16" shaft.
Buck67
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I should say that when you heat with bark on. DON'T OVER HEAT THIS WILL DEHYRATE THE SPOT REALLY GOOD. GO SLOW. You can't up oil like when debarked.
9 Out of 10 times it'll break at this spot if it's over heated.
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Does anybody here use the groove technique? Homemade arrows, especially those made from shoots benefit greatly from carving three shallow grooves down the shaft before heat straightening. the ridges made from the grooves get hotter than the rest o the wood and keep their straightness much better. many plains tribes did this to their arrows and it seems to be an almost lost technique among us moderns. i have used it a few times and it not only serves a purpose but has a cool look to it as well. if anyone else uses this style for shoots, do you burnish your shoots before or after the grooves. I do it before because thats the first way I did it and bein a creature of habit I just keep doing it. i wouldnt think it matters but I have no evidence to base that off of. (i have not done this with dowel arrows either)
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Does anybody here use the groove technique? Homemade arrows, especially those made from shoots benefit greatly from carving three shallow grooves down the shaft before heat straightening. the ridges made from the grooves get hotter than the rest o the wood and keep their straightness much better. many plains tribes did this to their arrows and it seems to be an almost lost technique among us moderns. i have used it a few times and it not only serves a purpose but has a cool look to it as well. if anyone else uses this style for shoots, do you burnish your shoots before or after the grooves. I do it before because thats the first way I did it and bein a creature of habit I just keep doing it. i wouldnt think it matters but I have no evidence to base that off of. (i have not done this with dowel arrows either)
Hey I was reading in Hamm's book "Bows and Arrows of the Native Americans" where he talks about adding grooves to his arrows because all of the museum arrows had it but really wasn't clear on the "why". He guessed that it would stiffen the arrow and keep it straight. I believe he was referring to red osier arrows.
Tracy
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NeolithicMan, Ill have to find the writing. Do you have any pictures of the ones you've done?
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Tracy, I have not read that particular piece by Jimm Hamm but i did steal the idea from TBB3 in the chapter he wrote on the subject. From the chapter, excuse my paraphrasing from memory, when these grooves are cut into the shaft before heat straightening it creates ridges that get hotter than the oher parts of the shaft and these help hold the shape applied to the wood. maybe i have a placebo effect working on me with this but it seems to help so i keep doing it.
Fred Arnold, I am trying to get pictures up of a lot of things. this weekend I am having a friend help me understand the technology I own and cant seem to operate. Ill try to get some up of arrows I have grooved.
John
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The groves servered for 1 thing.
To take away wood from the shaft to get the right spine.
NOT TO KEEP IT STRAIGHT
The tribles that did this could'nt get the smaller shoots needed. And with only scraping tools (knife or chert)
It would take forever to take down a bigger shoot to the spine they needed. Easyer to lighten the spine by taking wood away by cutting groves.
No rasps or sand paper like we have.
I asked my friend CROOKETARROW about why he did'nt cut groves in his arrows.
HE WAS IROQIOUS
He told me did'nt have to. He just cut the right size that took very little scraping.
LIKE WE DO
Think about it,takeing wood away would'nt help to keep the arrow straight.
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That is really interesting view on the grooves. It makes perfect sense that removing wood changes spine. like I said before I was doing this based on Jimm Hamms writings in TBB, and it could have been the placebo effect but I enjoy the ritual of adding them and the look of them. Hamms theroy was made from his viewing and replicating Western plains arrows. I believe the Iroquoi are East Natives, perhaps your modern friend knows if this spining theory is based off of ancient practices or more contemporary ones. maybe the East and West had different uses for a common idea instilled long before the spread of man across the continent. Maybe it was an independent development that came to be used at different or even the same time.
crooketarrow, what did you mean they could not get smaller shoots? if there are big shoots would there not be smaller ones at some point before they grew too large? Do you mean as they ran out of smaller shoots they started shaping the larger ones?
I am so attracted to the past and to all the ideas and developments that led to us now trying to pick apart and solve the many mysteries of commonly known themes of our ancestors. proud to be apart of this forum, you guys are the best. thanks
John
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All shoots have to be made from second year shoots or older.
Some shoots by the third year are a good 1/2 inch.
Way to big for the light indain bows.
SO instead of taking down the whole shoot. It was qicker and easyer to cut in and remove the need wood to make the arrow the right spine.
Very few indain bows reached 50 #'s
Even the western tribes that follow the buff. use'lly only used bows in the low, mid 50"s.
Seams like they also knew it's better to beable to hit your target that have a lot of exture pounds.
The same prinicable as today.