Woodies - Making Your Own Wooden Arrows

There’s a lot more to hunting than taking game. There’s dreaming about it, the preparation, the hunt itself; followed by butchering and the sharing of all these parts with others of our ilk. With repetition, these elements become traditions.

- Darren Haverstick

One of my favorite traditions is making the wooden arrows I’ll use for the upcoming archery season. I don’t really need them. I have boxes full of the primitive projectiles from seasons past. But I really enjoy the planning and the creation of these arrows because it reinforces the love I have for traditional bowhunting.

Crafting a set of “woodies” is a labor of love, not something that can or should be rushed. It’s a multi-step process that needs careful planning through each step to build the best arrow for your bow.

The first thing to determine is what spine (stiffness) of arrow shoots best from your bow. Wood arrow shafts have their static spine measured in pounds and a dozen matched shafts will not vary in spine by more than 5 pounds. The difficulty of picking out a properly spined wooden shaft is that the spine is also linked to weight and diameter. In general, the stiffer the shaft, the heavier its weight, the larger its diameter.

An ideal arrow of any material would be one that is as small in diameter as it can be, stiff enough to fly true, with good weight for penetration. You also want most of that weight at the tip to aid in penetration and increase flight stability.

With carbon or aluminum shafts, this is easy to accomplish because the materials themselves are light and stiff and you can then tweak the weight up front to find the sweet spot your bow likes. With wood, it’s a bit more complicated.

For the same spine value as carbon, the shaft is a lot heavier. Putting a heavy point on shifts the weight balance towards the front, but it also weakens its spine. To stiffen the arrow, you can either get higherspined shafts, which will likely increase arrow weight, or shorten the shaft.