Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Arrows => Topic started by: bjrogg on August 31, 2017, 09:01:25 pm
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Awhile back TSA decided to sponsor our arrow section on PA. They if I remember correctly they informed us to go to their site and look their stuff over. At the bottom of the site you could sign up for a chance to win a dozen of their arrow shafts. They got such a good response they decided to pick TWO Winners. Not only that but we could pick two more dozen 1 premium 1 hunter grade and just pay shipping.
I talked to Wayne on the phone. Very fun guy to talk arrows with. I put my choices in and Wayne told me it could be awhile. They don't kiln dry and they would have to harvest and season some wood. I received a PM about a week ago. It was Wayne, he was very apologetic about it taking so long. He said they were very busy filling urgent orders. He apologized for being forced to put my order to the back. He more than made it up to me by sending me all THREE DOZEN all shipping paid with a extra half dozen to butt.
These shafts are beautiful Wayne, I can't wait to bareshaft one of these. I'm very happy to hear business is good. With a personality and quality product you've got. I know these won't be the last shafts I get from you.
Thanks so much for the shafts and thanks for sponsoring our arrow section.
Bjrogg
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Nice!!!!!Douglas fir I presume?Looks like maybe spruce to?
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Actually Ed. If I remember right it's 24 Sitka spruce and 12 hemlock they are labeled but I didn't get them all Checked out yet
Bjrogg
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Nice looking shafts and from what I can see the numbers look good too. :OK
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Nice looking shafts! And a huge Thanks to Wayne!
Hawkdancer
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Wow, those are nice BJ - nice job TSA :OK ! Bob
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Thanks guys, when I laid them out for close up pictures it felt like I was looking at stacks of logs at a sawmill. They are exceptionally beautiful shafts.
Bjrogg
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Nice stuff BJ, that end grain tells the story.
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A few years ago I bought some compressed or forged hemlock from a shaft dealer from Alaska.Rather expensive but very narrow and heavy shafts in the 700 grain range or more when tipped with a 145 grain tip and fletched up @ 50 to 55 spine 30" long.Had to buy them @ 55 to 60 spine and sand them down to 50 to 55 spine my preferred spine.I should add here I could of left them an inch longer to take 5#'s off the spine too.Still using my tapered dogwoods yet though.....lol.
I think they say hemlock is comparable to douglas fir in weight maybe even a slight bit heavier.
You should be able to get a bunch of great flyers out of the bunch you got there.
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Those look very nice
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Thanks guys I feel pretty lucky today.
Ed that was the reason I picked some hemlock, for some weight. It's also is why my order took a little longer. I haven't had a chance to do much with them yet but they look nice. I think I'm going to hunt with my stone point Red Osier tappered shoot shalf arrows, but I may have one of these along
Bjrogg
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Good choice BJ.The spruce is good too but lighter yet of course.Excellent target arrows though unless made longer for more weight.Usually stay very straight.
Making those killer arrows are always fun to shoot.
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According to the Wood Database and my experience Western hemlock is a bit lighter than Doug Fir. When it's wet(green), different story. When I was building my house I used Hemlock floor joists 2"x 10" x 16'. I could barely lift them. It makes nice arrows. Very stable. I cut a bunch of 3/8" square blanks from greenish wood and put it in a tube with a light bulb. It was dry in a week with no warping.
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Thanks all for the very kind words.
Much appreciated all!! :D :D
so sorry it took a while! :-[
we will be putting more shafts up for grabs soon- just need to figure out a way so that there is not that interminable delay- I feel a bit embarrassed about it!
a bit hard to do, when everybody needs different shaft specs!
DC, you are correct. hemlock holds a lot of water when live, I have spoken to fallers who have said when they have cut into some of the big ol' trees- the fluids just start to flow out of the tree like water!!
When dried it is somewhere between Douglas fir and Sitka Spruce!
I must say I really like the spruce shafts, being lighter, one can up the point weight to attain your perfect hunting weight arrow, whilst simultaneously attaining a high FOC.
With some of the heavier types of shafts, after adding a heavy point, to improve the FOC, one can land up with quite a heavy arrow.
BEADMAN, the shafts you bought were from Steve Tanner of Alaska Frontier Archery.
Steve managed to acquire all the old "Sweetland Battle shaft" machinery, and the name!!!
He shipped it to Alaska, and spent years refurbishing all the machinery, and studying the process, whilst testing different wood species.
He found Both Sitka Spruce and Western Hemlock produced excellent "Forgewood" shafts, it was not limited only to POC!
He finally opted to go for Hemlock, and was producing 5/16 shafts in #80- #90 spine shafts.
He produced the shafts, very successfully, for many years, but i believe he is finally retiring and has recently sold the business!
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TSA...You are correct.I just managed to get a few on the tail end of his inventory sale.Possibly sometime I should try some 60 to 65 spine spruce with 160 or even 190 grain field tips on them for a 50# bow.See how much FOC I get from that.Hard to do to the degree or percentage that you can do it with carbides.
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I was also a winner of the giveaway. Very nice product from TSA. Thanks Wayne!!
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You are most welcome, my friend!! :D
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You are correct Beadman, you wont get the same %ages as with the ultra light carbons (can we even use that word on here ;) )
Putting a tail taper on the spruce will help a bit more too! ;D
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Wayne, how much rear taper do you add to your shafting. I tapered some poplar shafts I had and loved the way they shoot. I think I put 8" or 9" from 11/32" to 5/16".
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what i do, and this is not cast in stone- but just what works for me- i taper anywhere from 1/4 to max 1/3 of total shaft length after trimming to my personal length, also taking the 11/32 down to 5/16.
i have always gone by the rule that the middle third is what contributes mostly to the spine. just looking at how the shaft bends.
but i am sure some technologically more advanced soul will have better input than my thumb suck ideas! :)
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Wayne, I'm a lot better with thumb suck ideas than technology. :OK
Thanks.
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Yes a 10" nock taper on a 30" shaft would work good on spruce I think from doing it in the past with DF.This may be a primitive archery site but I see no reason to turn a blind eye to what works the best using the natural materials at hand.I'm able to get into the low teens tapering dogwoods which I like a lot,but getting into the upper teens or even 20% FOC would be even better.A friend of mine gets them close to 30% FOC with carbides.He loves it.
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Love talking arrows with you guys. Wayne are you offering tappered shafts now? I did get some turned tappered shafts in a trade at Marshall Meet this year. They really made some sweet arrows. I think they said four winds on the box if I remember correctly. I also got some tappered shaft complete arrows from Marshall benefit auction that Larry from lost nation Archery donated. Really like them all.
Bjrogg
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yes, i will do tapered shafts for folk who would really like them. Currently, i do them manually with a jig much like the one i have seen Pat use, in fact he was the guy who put me onto it years ago!
However, we are in the process of building a fully automated tapering machine, that will do shafts automatically, fed from a hopper. That will really bring the costs down!
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I didn't win any shafts in the raffle, but did buy a few dozen from Wayne. The quality is outstanding and they are very matched. He even stamps with ink the grain weight and exact spine on each shaft. High quality - high end shafts, no doubt.
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yea Pearly, glad you like them!
thats a special spine tester we have, the shafts are loaded by hand to ensure correct grain orientation, the machine then weighs and spines automatically to 1 decimal place, then the onboard 'puter rounds it off, then automatically prints.
so the printing is on the side of the shaft that the weight would have hung from!
in other words the printing is on the outer curve of the test cycle- if that makes sense.
i could do a sketch if folk would prefer.
this just helps so that you know which way the spine was measured, and so in turn how you should orientate on the bow.
the printing should be away from the bow- if it really makes that much difference- dont know that it does.
heck, most of you guys shoot squiggley, knobby, crooked sticks out of yer bows- and seem to make them work!
so I dont think spine orientation is really gonna make much difference (-S
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Wayne I was always one to put the nock perpendicular to the grain, that's what all the books told me to do. Well, I was given a bunch of arrows and the nocks are all over the board. They all fly wonderfully and the same from shot to shot. So, does it matter? I'm starting to think it doesn't. Perhaps that "rule" was adopted at the time of self nocks only and safety had to be considered. With a plastic nock I don't think its a safety issue no matter when the nock is turned in relation to the grain. The string cant split the arrows grain.
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Pearly, i am being overly technical in my nock placement advice.
primarily cos i am OCD about detail, ( my wife calls it something else- thats a lot less polite and makes reference to my posterior and my alimentary canal). (A) ;D
the positioning of the nock- may certainly have its origins in self nock building, but i cant comment on that, even though it makes perfect sense.
however from the perspective of a plastic nock and the relative spine of the shaft, i believe it stems from wanting to put the stiffest portion of the shaft against the bow, which is usually the edge grain, as the resilience of the edge grain cut, should, in theory, allow it to recover from paradox marginally quicker.
wood grain shafts are usually tested on an edge grain side-, i guess this is an attempt to find the stiffer side of the shaft. as for the process above!
Also that an average shaft may produce different spines on different quadrants, and if you want a certain spine shaft then its probably best to use that specific section of the shaft where that spine was tested and noted.
so those are the ideas and the theories.
but here are some facts- just to confuse things
1. yes the majority of shafts do test stiffer across the edge grain of a shaft, but i have had many shafts that proved the opposite, by measuring stiffer on the flat grain than the edge grain, and have also had many shafts that measured the same all around the shaft, have also had some that were #5 lighter on the flat as opposed to the edge grain. i have even had shafts measure differently on the two opposite sides of the edge grain.
i guess there is so much going on in a trees life, so many stresses and strains, that we are totally oblivious of.
2. watch the video link below of wooden shafts being shot, its the best video i have ever seen.
now look at about 2.07 on the video-now this fascinates me, and blows all the theory out of the water, IMHO!
see after the shaft starts to rotate- after leaving the string, and it takes a few feet to get up to full rotation, so the shaft is spinning, but the shaft is still oscillating from side to side- not oscillating in all directions relative to the edge grain only.
that tells me that the energy generated during paradox seems to override everything else.
so does it really matter if the spines are different on different facets of the shaft, and how they are orientated on the bow, as they all come into play as soon as it starts to rotate???- I dunno :o
i think the real point here, for me, is just shoot the damn arrows( i have to keep telling myself this). tune them to shoot out of the bow- paper tune every shaft- make sure it is tuned- treat every shaft as an individual- not as a homogenous whole. even carbon shafts vary this much, as does boo or cane, or shoots, or ali!!
and i think your"malaligned" nocks bear testament to this-we overly analyze( well i do) things- more archers out there, need to be more like folks on here- just build the gear and shoot it and enjoy it!!!
i think primitive man knew this, he built an arrow, if it worked he kept it, I am sure they all had varying foc's, spines, weights etc etc
i know i get overly technical with some of this stuff, it is a passion. However, if things are not working out, one has a technical perspective to try and figure out how to rectify it
besides what am i going to blame next time i miss a deer at 5 yards again, i know its not my shooting 'cos we all know thats perfect- probably was a 3 degree misalignment on my nock :laugh: :laugh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96KGWC0PB6s
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Wayne
that video has some revealing arrow action, quite intriguing actually.
the shaft is spinning, but the shaft is still oscillating
is it actually spinning? it almost looks like it wants to reverse rotation direction as it flexes back and forth
might be the camera, but maybe not
Here is some different footage that shows what I mean
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEjvV6Q6394
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yup, its certainly the best video i have ever seen on the topic,
i do think there are a lot of other factors that come into play as the video progresses, as they use weaker and weaker spined shafts, we see an exaggerated paradox, weird oscillations and incredible flexion on impact!
i think the reason for the flu flu fletching, was both to slow the shafts down somewhat, but also for an enhanced visual effect.
i have watched that video so many, many times, and every time i see something new. :o
i will for sure be looking for your noted observations the next time i watch it , thank you Willie :)
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Are We not discussing - Reed & Rift (sp) - of the the Arrows here (SH) ?
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I know even with shoot shafts the spine can register different at different rotations on the spiner.I may be wrong but I put what I think to be the stiffer side against the bow just like split timber shafts.I always write the spine weight on my shafts mid shaft visible when I notch the arrow onto the string.So I write the spine weight onto the underside of a shaft the way it's bending on my spine tester because that is the bend that's going around the handle.
In the video there is a slight bending the other way in the very beginning of the flight of the arrow.Not as pronounced as the one going around the handle though.I don't pay any attention to that then correct?
Here's a pic of my tester.It has a measuring dial indicator that can be zeroed out in the beginning to show the bend from the 2# weight being hung on it.26" width of pegs with a chart to reference the bend number on the face of the dial to actual spine weight the shaft has.Been using this tester for quite some time.Homemade/cost around 20.00/tested it against other archery shops testers and it's true to form along with the action my arrows show me.It's a good spine tester.TSA....I appreciate your willingness to inform us of good proper arrow work.
(http://i920.photobucket.com/albums/ad41/Beadman1/DSCN1805_zpsekgahsns.jpg) (http://s920.photobucket.com/user/Beadman1/media/DSCN1805_zpsekgahsns.jpg.html)
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@2:04 in the video I linked to a few posts back, it seems like rotation is caused by the flexing, rather than the feathers.
I see the dart rotating a half turn when the flex is "going it's way" then the rotation stops when the dart flexs back the other way .... it starts and stops. I am viewing with the frame rate slowed down to .25 speed with full resolution
seems like I see the same happening with the arrows in the the video that TSA linked to also
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I see.Then the bending is slowing the rotaion down and when the arrow shaft is straight it resumes spinning that short time it's straight during paradox.That's why it's herky jerky spinning in the beginning.
I know when I shoot my 5 degree helical mounted feathers that I can see with the naked eye my arrows start turning more so yet farther away as the shaft equalizes and stiffens up which tells me it's the wind and degree of twist the feathers have making it spin really.The greater degree the helical the faster and sooner the arrows will turn.
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That's the way I see it, Ed. when using helical fetching and deliberately creating a spin. The spinning helps to tame the oscillations and the arrow gets on target sooner.
when the fletching is not offset, (or no other factor like the "wing" of the feathers causes the arrow to spin) then the flexing oscillations causes a different kind of spin.
If I take a arrow or fishing rod tip, and bow it slightly by pressing down in the middle while one end rests at 45 degrees on a tabletop, and then try to rotate it, I can often feel the stiff side. If I then place the stiff side up and push down, the rod wants to rotate a half turn when it bends.
my thought is that an arrow that spines more equally in all quadrants might need less fletching or less offset to stabilize. and perhaps why the hexshafts are preferred by some.
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You may be right to your conclusions that more equally balanced spined shafts do bare shaft tune better and get by with less and straighter fletching.In the end less drag/less weight and a faster more efficient type shaft.I do know also at least with shoot shafts that the pith is not always dead center on those shafts which could account for the slight uneven spine.But now what I've seen also and many can attest to that an overall full length taper on shoot shafts do seem to be a lot more forgiving also for quick smooth clean arrow flight at least for target shooting and hunting.
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so the question is? will a hexshaft perform better within the parameters above- with the same spine in any direction.
what about the old sweetland shafts- that were compressed on the flatgrain side- also making for equal/ similar density all around the shaft.
its awesome to see people scratching the itch. lots of good ideas and observations above- great food for the beast ;D
thanks all for spending the time analyzing the videos and all the input- great feedback.- always something to learn, given me a lot to think about!