More Messing With Arrow Shafts

My mate JT brought over some 3/8" Ash shafts for making some Warbow flight arrows. They are rather coarse grained and don't machine very well... mind I hadn't perfected my travelling steady for turning arrow shafts at that point. The problem is the shafts aren't precision items, so the steady needs to hold the shaft firmly, but with a little 'give'.
I finally made the mk3 steady, which when waxed with beeswax/turps polish works nicely. It has a 3/8" hole with a slot cut right into it and two other slots allowing it to flex a tad. It works really nicely on some Maple shafts I had left over from ages ago, they were a whisker fatter than the Ash, but the steady took up the slack, mind it did squeak a bit!
It would be easy enough to make this sort of steady for different sized shafts and make a version with an adjustable blade (say a pencil sharper blade or a bit of hacksaw blade sharpened) behind the steady for use with an electric drill rather than a lathe.
In terms of spine the maple is very similar to the Ash. This got me to thinking what other woods would be good, Hazel seems like a possibility, so I strolled over to the woods and cut some shoots, I also cut a bit of Elder, which is very soft and green, maybe it will harden up as it seasons.
The Hazel may season quite quickly, I straightened the shoots by hand while they are green and soft, it turned out that one bit had been standing dead, it was much harder and it snapped as I tried to straighten it. I think some rot had set in as it was an odd colour inside. Yew would probably make a superb arrow, but there's a sad lack of decent clean straight Yew, although I'll bear it in mind for offcuts in future. A Yew Warbow flight arrow would surely be a thing of beauty, maybe with a tiny  brass point?

I s'pose I should mention, I'm turning shafts to overall size, they will then be tapered at each end with my arrow taper jig. The taper jig doesn't remove material as fast as the lathe, so it's best to use the lathe first.
Enough musing, here's a couple of pics

Flight Shooting Fail

Damn...
The grass in the secret flight shooting field has shot up over the last two weeks and was too long. It didn't stop us trying, but it took an age to find 'em and we didn't want to risk shooting them again.
They were shot from a 100# warm up bow, not the 120#.
It's impossible to draw definitive conclusions from such sparse data, but there are some tentative conclusions. I shot the arrow with the odd flights from a short draw and it was predictably short and can be ignored.
Of the other 4 arrows two were very close to each other, one was about 6 yards further and one was about 6 yards short. I noted that the flight was fairly clean  but there was some tail waggle
The furthest was the weakest spine (70-75#)
The shortest wasn't the strongest spine but was 80 -85#
I can tentatively surmise that weaker spine isn't significantly worse and that spine isn't overly critical as there was no vast difference.
I'll be measuring up some other flight arrows which I know have performed fairly well from the bow in question, and see if I can improve on those.
The downer is that we have no where to shoot for distance unless the field gets cut for hay.

A friend is giving me some pieces of parchment so I can experiment with that for fletchings. It's good to share materials, I sent some horn to one of the UK guys on Primitive Archer.
There's a good community spirit, the mini bow (24" long) I made from the broken Yew heartwood primitive got to the Marshall Primitive meet in the USA and apparently was quite impressive. The mini bows shot well, one of the guys sent some pics reckons they would get you meat if the need arose (or presumably stop a zombie when the apocalypse comes).

Musings on Flight Arrows

Boring post alert!
I've been asking for opinions on flight arrows and one suggestion was to select the spine by getting 'em to fly straight without flights. That's fair enough, so why do we need flights at all?... well the back end may well waggle in flight or move round in a circle, I've seen it with an arrow with wet flights the point went straight and the nock was describing a 3 inch circle!
The flights will also damp down the vibration/oscillation of the arrow caused by it flexing round the bow. This begs the question, how long does the vibration last?
So, I took one of the shafts I'm using and clamped one end in the vice, I pulled the free end out by one inch (a reasonable deflection) and let go... blimey the damn thing was vibrating significantly for at least 4 seconds! Well even at at 150fps it would still be vibrating after travelling 200 yards!
Ok there are loads of errors and approximations there:-
1. The mode of vibration is more likely to be with either end stationary (nodes) and the middle moving (anti-node), rather than the one end fixed (node) and the end an anti-node.
2.The deflection would probably be less.

So lets assume the oscillation dies down twice as quick and was half as big, so we'll divide the time by 4. That still gives 1 second which is 150 feet or 30 yards as we sometimes call it.
That pretty much ties in with the sort of waggle you can sometimes see.
Ha! Just found a better test. I tried to hold the ends and twang the middle but it wasn't really feasible... but clamping the middle and twanging both ends simultaneously produces the same result from a topological view point! Yes the vibration dies down quicker, but does go on for about a second... there, I'm not as daft as I look! :-)
Ah, but the fletchings aren't at the anti node, so they won't be damping out the movement, Hmmm I'm more confused than when I started. maybe I should try having fletchings in the middle of the arrow too? just kidding... or am I?

I'm not suggesting that this is by any means a good mathematical model, but maybe it's indicative of the usefulness of the fletchings. It's a trade off between stabilising the arrow rapidly and increased drag for the rest of the flight.
I'm pretty sure that actual testing is the only way to optimise the arrow to the bow, no way you can buy an "off the shelf" flight arrow.

First Warbow Flight Arrow

I've got it finished and shot it through my heaviest bows, which aren't really much over about 80# @ 32" but at least the arrow survived, they were sticking in at a slight angle, (nock to the left) it's pretty irrelevant with an underweight bow.
I'm not sure if the flights are too thin and flexible, it needs a proper test. The spine is only 75-80# so I think I'll make up the next two from higher spines. I'll probably fletch 'em with my usual commercial flights, but trimmed down to low profile with my hot plate feather shaper.
The nock end of the arrow has a rod of horn (approx 3.5mm diameter) glued down the centre. The end is tapered by about 4 degrees (too slide set to 2 degrees) a small flat is filed on each side and a sliver of horn glued on with rapid epoxy. The end is then bound with fine linen thread, low viscosity superglue is dabbed onto the thread and soaks in hardening the whole lot. It was then all sanded down smooth on the belt sander and wiped over with epoxy to make it smooth.
The ears of horn give a secure deep nock, but don't actually grip the string. the nock groove itself is smoother with a round needle file.
If I get 3 made up, we might get to test 'em at the weekend or one evening. (you reading this JT? ;-) )

Turning Flight Arrow Points

This is really an aide memoir for me as I don't use my little lathe that often and I forget how I did it last time. The critical bit is turning down the neck, if the right end of the work isn't supported it will just bend or snap off. The female centre I use is just a scrap of brass rod with a hole in held in a chuck which is a bit big. When I bought that chuck on line I thought bigger was more useful, but it's not always the case, as it stops me getting the tool in close without it overhanging the tool post a long way. I expect any of you who are skilled machinists will see I'm probably doing it all wrong. Any hints or suggestions gratefully received.
I was surprised how light the point is, I could have gone a bit longer on the neck and point maybe.
Once the point is glued into a shaft they will be finished together with very light cuts to blend in a smooth taper and get a good finish.
The point of all this is to try different spines from 120# warbow (and assorted other bows) to hopefully get a clean flight.
I have a theory, I've since found it is also held by others, that you need a much lower spine than one would think for flight arrows which have to flex round the bow (as opposed to being centre shot). This is due to the lightness of the arrow and specifically the lightness of the point. There is much less inertia resisting the huge initial acceleration and thus less bending force.
I had one bloke on a Facebook group telling me I didn't know what I was talking about in a rather abrasive manner... I left the group.
I'm happy to indulge in reasoned argument or discussion, but there seem to be few people these days who understand the rules of arguing logically. You have to counter a point or explanation with facts or logic, calling someone an idiot doesn't really achieve much.
I'm happy to share my knowledge and lack of it, and I'm quite happy to be wrong!
But I wasn't going to waste time trying to explain something to someone who couldn't distinguish between a 1/4 pound arrow and a flight arrow.
I've glued in one of the points and blended it in on the lathe, (slide set to 5 degree angle) I could possibly taper it a bit more. The arrow weighs 499.8 grain which is convenient, doubtless it will be a tad over 500 when it's finished. The balance is nicely just fore of centre.

Patch and Arrow Plate Done

The 'Transatlantic' bow (American Yew belly, English Yew back) has been refubished, the patch is pretty good. The yellow arrows in the pic show the extent of the patch.
The bow needed a hint of re-tillering, the lower limb has taken a bit of set over the years and unfortunately I can't use heat to straighten it because of the glue line. The upper limb, where the patch is, has been evened out a tad which has re balanced the bow a bit.
I've only shot one arrow at about 27" draw so far. I'll shoot it at 32" when it's had another day to cure the glue. meanwhile I've added a huge arrow plate. Because it's been shooting warbow arrows with their cheese-grater whipping round the fletchings, the wood at the arrow pass had been ripped to hell.
Anyhow it's looking better now and should give a few more years service.

Meanwhile the 24" mini bow has been posted off to the USA as the "UK Entry" to the Marshall Mini Bow Challenge. Hopefully there will be some pics of the fun.

Patch Progress and a Mini Bow

I chiselled out the splinter but it went quite deep in places and would be very difficult to shape a matching piece. I could now see the extent of the problem so I rasped out all the split, fading it out gently at either end, making sure the the pin knots were covered, mind there is another pin knot about 1/2" further along, but to extend the patch over that would have been tricky as there is a dip there. Got to draw the line somewhere, and I s'pose it's just gut feel and experience.
The tricky thing is to make the patch so that it needs very little to blend it in, I want the natural under bark surface left for maximum integrity and also to look right. 3rd pic shows chunk of Yew sapwood from which I'll cut the patch... it's got a lovely clean back.
The pics tell the story, I'll post more tomorrow when the strapping comes off.
Meanwhile, I've made the 24" bow, it's about 35# at 12"
I'm adding some finishing touches, (  sort of parrot.turtle head to the bottom nock ) and hoping to ship it out the the States for the Marshall Mini Bow Challenge :-)