The Arrow Maker’s Conundrum
Tough, authentic, accurate high quality bamboo arrows.
In my previous article, I mentioned that good bamboo arrows are the toughest in the world. Let me cear something up. They are certainly tougher than carbon arrows, but only if the quality of the bamboo is good. It is my opinion that they are tougher than any other wood arrow I have shot, and since I can do some lousy shooting, I have broken many fine arrows. So let’s dig into what “high quality bamboo” looks like. High quality bamboo isn’t as easy to find, but well worth the search because in the long run it is much less expensive.
The low quality bamboo is what most of us have been sold the first time we went shopping for bamboo arrows and shafts. Just below you can see an example of a LOUSY bamboo arrow which was ordered by a customer of mine. He got these online from the biggest bamboo arrow supplier in the world. Nearly every one of his set of 12 arrows had a major flaw in it. I believe that the only reason this supplier gets away with selling these garden stakes (it certainly is a very poor arrow) is because their customers don’t know better.
Example 1
To get specific, bamboo DOES have irregularities on the skin of the shaft. I refuse to EVER modify the surface of the shaft. Sanding down the outside of a hollow tube will certainly not have the same outcome as sanding down the surface of a solid piece of wood such as cedar arrow shafts. I have never researched how to make a bamboo arrow fail when launched, so I leave this strictly ALONE. Since this is the case, there will be arrows which appear to be “wiggly” on a spin tester, but are actually straight. I see 90% of these irregularities on lightly spined bamboo arrows of 33 pounds or less. I have learned the hard way that it becomes much more difficult to make good consistent groups of bamboo arrows when the spine drops below 30 pounds of deflection. That isn’t to say that you can’t manipulate the DYNAMIC spine of a 34 pound arrow to fly like a 28 pound spined arrow, but when the STATIC SPINE (the spine measured on a spine tester which is accurate for bamboo) drops into the 30 pound range or less, they just begin to have too many irregularities. These irregularities lead to balance problems (the FOC balance point), and arrows which just aren’t predictable.
Below are some photos of this kind of bamboo shaft.
Bamboo Arrows are made from bamboo exactly as it grows
As you can see in this photo, the skins of these 25 pound shafts are different. The top shaft has nice nodes which are only noticeable because of the change in bamboo color.
The middle shaft is straight, but would appear irregular on a spine tester such as I use because of the irregularities on the surface. You can also see the node on that arrow looks noticeable and might be brittle. While it might appear “suspect”, I found it to be satisfactory, but only after much flexing beyond what a bow would ever do to this arrow. If you shoot arrows with a static spine measured at 33 pounds or more, you will rarely see these irregularities. You certainly won’t get them from me because I hand select every shaft on every order. These kinds of shafts never leave my shop unless a customer wants a shaft less than 30 pounds…just so you know.
The bottom shaft in this photo has some minor irregularities which are fine. The issue which first concerned me about this particular shaft was the visible grain which runs THROUGH the node. However, this grain is STRAIGHT, instead of gnarled, which means that arrow flexing will be more even throughout the flight of the arrow. Still, it bears testing just to be sure.
To take this one more step, please see the photos below. In the left side photo below, you can see the full length of the middle 25 pound shaft from the photo just above. It is straight when I spin the arrow, but the skin has irregularities on the surface which may make this arrow appear to be crooked. As mentioned before, I rarely, if ever, find these on high quality bamboo shafts which have a static spine of 33 pounds or higher. The photo on the right is a 34 pound arrow from my own quiver which I am certain I have shot over 600 or more times. It flies just fine, but it does have a few skin irregularities, although they are less pronounced.
So, it is very helpful to know that an arrow shaft which APPEARS to be crooked because of skin irregularities can be confused with an arrow with bad nodes and actually is crooked. If an arrow is bent at the nodes, such as the arrow at the top of this article, it is always a deal-breaker for me. ALWAYS. Don’t let these skin irregularities confuse you with an arrow which is BENT at the nodes. That is an entirely different story, and will make a fine garden stake.
Just to beat a dead horse, here is a bad shaft that I recently found when sorting through an order of 300 new high quality shafts. It was the only shaft which was bad, but it is worth looking at. The reason I show you this is you should set high expectations and not allow the junk shafts shown above to be sold to you.
I haven’t seen a shaft with bad nodes in over a year until this one came along. I certainly understand how this might happen…once in a great while!
In the photos below, you will see more examples of what the nodes look like with poor quality bamboo. I don’t buy junk, and I don’t sell junk…and neither should you have to put up with this ever again. You can see a common example of poor quality bamboo because the nodes are gnarled and bent, causing the shaft to look like it does.
To be specific:
- This arrow is VERY UNLIKELY to ever survive the arrow making process because it will never be straight.
- Because all arrows “whip” when they hit a dense target such as a bag target, this arrow has the life expectancy of a rattle snake in my house. The sheer (sideways) stress of the “whip”, which all arrows have, will not be even. At some point the bamboo shaft will fail. This is a nice way of saying it will snap into 2 pieces.
- Please notice that the node on the right side is gnarled. This is why the arrow looks like it does, and why this arrow will NEVER be straight.
- What I am telling you is that high quality bamboo doesn’t cost more than the mediocre and poor quality stuff, AND it lasts for years. It is a much better value for you, IF YOU KNOW WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE.
My second point here is that just because the skin of a bamboo shaft is irregular, it may still make a fine bamboo arrow. Perhaps these photos will allow you to be more discerning when you receive these shafts.
My third point, and yes…I do run a business, is that you can just order them from me.
Wallowing in mediocrity
Now let’s take a step up from poor quality bamboo to mediocre bamboo. Mediocre bamboo is what is most commonly found on the internet. Because of the obvious poor quality of the lousy bamboo, many arrow buyers are thrilled to find anything which is straight, and they unwittingly buy the mediocre shafts without realizing it. The mediocre shafts are a HUGE step up from the “junk”. However, they aren’t what it might appear to be. Typically the do appear to be straight, and this is nice, but that isn’t the entire story.
Mediocre bamboo
For years, my ignorance led me to believe that because the arrows were generally free of the obvious flaws, I was buying good bamboo. I thought this…until I actually found good bamboo and compared it to the middling stuff. It isn’t as obvious, but there are real differences between high quality bamboo and mediocre bamboo. Here is how I judge bamboo which I buy and sell.
As you can see in the photo above, the high quality bamboo (the bottom shaft in this photo) is denser, smaller, more compact, and this makes for a much stronger arrow. You may recall that I made the statement that high quality bamboo is the toughest arrow you will ever find, and it is tougher than carbon. Now that isn’t to say that you can’t EVER break a high quality bamboo arrow, but you’ll be surprised just how much abuse they will survive.
In the photo above, the high quality shaft has a much stronger, compact shaft which is much less likely break then the “fatter” medium quality shaft which is the top shaft in the photo. Both of the shafts in the photo above tested on my spine tester to be 55–60 pounds. You can see the obvious difference.
What you can’t see is very important!
I recently saw an excellent video by a young man on how to make bamboo arrows. I agreed with everything he said. He obviously knows what he is doing. But then he had to discuss how his arrows were also brittle. His shafts began to shred apart when he beveled the ends of the shaft for a glue-on head or a nock.
In fact, I often get questions about how I bevel the ends of my arrow shafts for a nock or glue-on head. When I tell people I use a simple razor blade tool like this one from 3Rivers Archery, they tell me that their arrows begin to “shred” or come apart with this kind of tool.
This inexpensive tool is all you need to prepare high quality shafts.
This tells me that he got their shafts from one of the online sellers of bamboo. These sellers are a step up from EBAY and Amazon shafts, but they aren’t the high quality shafts.
This “shredding” is the BEST clue that your shafts were not grown properly, and didn’t have time to mature naturally prior to harvesting them. They are “dry”. This brittleness is one of the very best indicators that you may have acceptable shafts, but they aren’t the higher quality shafts. This is important to know…and here is why.
Not only does a high quality shaft cost virtually the same as the medium quality shaft, but a dense, tough, high quality shaft doesn’t “shred”. I promise you. It simply is too dense. This is part of the reason it lasts much longer than the other stuff.
The mediocre shafts, such as the top shaft in the photo above, generally don’t last for more than a year or two, and they break in half like other wooden arrows might. I found this to be very interesting.
HERE IS WHY
When an arrow hits a dense target, it “WHIPS” back and forth at a high rate of speed. This whipping, if it is pronounced, causes the sheer (sideways) stress on an arrow shaft which might break the shaft after enough stress has occurred. This is a HUGE difference between high quality bamboo and the “middling” or mediocre bamboo shafts. Because high quality bamboo is much denser, it will easily survive the sheer (sideways) stress of thousands of shots without the “whip” that begins to take a toll on arrow over time.
In fact, I placed a short video showing how stable high quality shafts are when they impact on my YouTube channel at this link:
These arrows were shot into a dense…damned near impenetrable… cotton backstop. Take a look!
I recently broke my very first high quality bamboo arrow from my own quiver just a few days ago. I have shot these arrows for several years. I am certain this arrow was shot into the dense backstop I just discussed AT LEAST 600 times, if not more. As you can see, the shaft just opened along the grain, but they don’t “SNAP” in half like other wooden arrows. They are just that tough!
Below is a photo of this arrow.
As you can see, the arrow began to come apart ALONG the grain, not across it. Perhaps the fact that it went into a 2X4 at an odd angle and penetrated all the way through the edge had a lot to do with how it broke. I had a hell of a time pulling it out from the 2X4. The brass collar disappeared somewhere along the way. But the wood just couldn’t take the sideways stress of being bent through the corner of a 2X4. What is important to note here is that this is the first and only black arrow which has broken, other than being split by another arrow, in the last year. I believe this represents a superior value than the middling arrows which just aren’t tough enough.
The next photo shows what happened when my product testers started shooting my arrows directly into trees at 10 yards. Of course these arrows failed. Any arrow is likely to fail, but the important point is that they failed along the grain, but not because of the sideways “whip” of the impact. Perhaps this will give you an idea of just how much TOUGHER the high quality bamboo is.
Happily, it is true to say that the high quality bamboo is so tough that the head usually fails long before the bamboo shaft does. In fact it is nearly always the case for me that the shaft will outlast the head on the end of the shaft. It is certainly true that the high carbon steel heads of my BLACK ARROW COLLECTION will bend when the arrow hits a solid object. Because this is the weakest point in the black arrows, the high quality bamboo shaft survives without damage. Fixing the point is very easy. The brass collars on these arrows certainly help too.
The arrow below was one of my early black arrows. This arrow was shot into a piece of angle iron (terrible shot) at 20 yards from a 44 pound horse bow. I would never see a mediocre bamboo arrow survive this! In fact, I would be surprise it any arrow survived this kind of abuse. High quality bamboo will survive, AND I HOPE YOU GET MY POINT.
Would you expect ANY arrow to survive this? In fact, after a head replacement, this arrow was back in my quiver. It is still there today!
How high quality shafts allow you tighter groups!
We all know that arrows “flex” in flight. If they don’t flex the same, it is unreasonable to expect them to group tighly, isn’t it? Because high quality bamboo is very predictable, it is so much easier to make successful arrows of them. WHETHER I MAKE THE ARROWS, OR YOU MAKE THE ARROWS…There is no substitute for success. I define success simply. If a set of arrows sets you up for success, they must NOT ONLY BE TOUGH, but they must group tightly…assuming your form is good. Let me say it another way.
It simply isn’t enough for bamboo arrows to be tough.
“IF YOUR ARROWS AREN’T PREDICTABLE, THEN YOU WILL SIMPLY END UP CHASING THEM AROUND THE TARGET FACE TRYING TO FIND THE BULLS EYE”. This isn’t success! Can I get an “amen”?
So, let’s discuss how high quality bamboo shafts set you up for success.
Two other very critical differences are shown in the photos below. These flaws negatively affect the arrow as it flexes in flight, and definitely will impact how tightly the arrows group. As a result, it might even affect your confidence in your archery ability. After all, if your arrows tend to scatter, and you see others whose arrows group tightly…you have to begin to wonder, right? Would you feel successful?
The first of these VERY SUBTLE flaws is that bamboo is a grass. The bamboo shaft walls don’t always grow evenly.
In this photo, you can see that this bamboo shaft was grown with an uneven wall thickness. I suspect you can see that this shaft will produce an arrow which will be much stiffer on one side than another. If you know how an arrow flexes AND SPINS in flight, you can easily imagine that this arrow will not fly predictably. I suspect you can imagine why some arrows just scatter around. If you are buying the middle quality shafts, then there is a strong likelihood that a fair proportion of your arrows will not only be dry…and brittle…but will have these wall issues. So check them out!
If you are like me, I go to the range and I EXPECT to see improvement! I want eventual improvement rather than the same old middling scores which is discouraging and erodes my confidence in my archery skills.
We all know that an arrow flexes in flight, right? Not only do we want it to begin to spin in flight, but we want it to flex as it flies too. The arrow WILL flex around its weakest point in the middle half of the arrow (more or less). WHAT HAPPENS IF THE WEAKEST POINT IN THE SHAFT IS NOT IN THE MIDDLE? Well, the arrow is STILL going to flex around its weakest point!
As a matter of fact, the reason we spine arrows on a spine tester IS TO FIND THAT WEAKEST POINT! As an arrow maker, I do this to match it to other arrow spines which will closely match so that they all LAUNCH the same, and they all FLY the same. If you want “teacup” groups, that’s the first step, but by no means is it the last step.
Perhaps you can imagine that if this twisted node is in the middle of the arrow. This arrow WON’T be flexing there! This is likely to be the strongest point of the shaft, not the weakest. AN ARROW FLEXES AT ITS WEAKEST POINT. Hopefully that makes sense. It the shaft wall isn’t even…if the nodes aren’t friendly…good luck finding the weakest point at launch and thus finding the actual static spine of the arrow shaft. If you think this though, can’t you see those arrow actually scattering? I have nightmares about this.
Additionally, when measuring the arrow shaft above, on a spine tester, it is highly probable, that if this gnarled node isn’t in the center where we tend to measure static spines, you may not realize that your readings won’t be accurate.
Despite our best efforts, this will lead to some of our arrows JUST NOT GROUPING with the others. The photo below shows just such a case…and its heartbreaking that I spent time building an arrow which isn’t going to group, isn’t predictable, and will NEVER work well.
In this example, the arrow to the left spined like the others on a static spine tester, but in flight…it simply doesn’t fly like the others. I can walk through this for you, but the reasons were humiliatingly clear. I just missed them! The most obvious problem was that the shaft was actually much stiffer (a higher static spine) than the spine tester showed. I didn’t find the weakest point of the shaft and measure the spine at that point.
In his outstanding book, “Timeless Bowhunting; the Art, the Science, & the Spirit”; Roy S. Marlow defines this flight behavior as “DYNAMIC SPINE”. Simply put, STATIC SPINE is how the arrow spine deflection measures on a spine tester. DYNAMIC SPINE is how the arrow actually flies. Of course the good news is that Roy explains how to manipulate the outlying arrow to group with the others without altering the safety of that arrow. Since I’m a data nerd, I was thrilled to find this book. I can’t recommend it enough, if you want real engineering and flight data rather than guesswork.
I suspect I have probably bored you out of your mind as to what good bamboo looks like. The last point I want to say is that sometimes bamboo is round. Sometimes bamboo is not. This is another subtle difference between high quality bamboo and the middling stuff. In the photo below, you can see two of my arrow shafts side by side. If you look closely at the shaft on the right is nice and round. This is NOT true of the shaft on the left. It is actually oval. Sometimes this ovoid shape is subtle and easy to miss. My suspicion is that because this bamboo is cut straight from the fields, most of these shafts have some irregularities in the wall thickness which might be missed because they are just too subtle to see…UNLESS YOU KNOW TO LOOK.
The oval shaft on the left is still usable, but you will need to be mindful of where the cock feather goes so that the dynamic spines all match when they launch.
I ALWAYS measure the static spine at least 4 sides of every shaft, and mark where they match so they will launch the same. By now, some of you will have found that bamboo requires a very different spine tester to be accurate. High quality bamboo is thinner. Some spine testers simply aren’t accurate enough to measure them. Some spine testers aren’t sensitive enough. I find that the spine tester shown below is PERFECT for the irregularities of bamboo shafts…assuming you measure the static spine of several sides.
https://acearcherytackle.com/home/ace-spine-spin-tester/
There may be others which are just as accurate for bamboo. I haven’t tried them all. And just so you know…I don’t even know the owner, and we have no business relationship. I wish we did, but he isn’t in to paying for advertising…but still, it is the best I have found.
I know most of my readers are well aware that the static spine of an arrow is NOT the spine in flight. This is called the DYNAMIC spine of an arrow. Bamboo arrows are easy to manipulate safely. This is where I will pick up on my next article. I call it the “arrow maker’s conundrum”. There are 4 (sometimes competing) priorities that need to be within a range of acceptability before you can have the confidence that these highly durable arrows will also group into a tea cup. One priority is the static spine. The other three…well, that’s my next article!
Originally published at https://timelessarchery.medium.com on September 5, 2021.
