Laminated Wooden Arrows?

Message

gilnockie · #1 Post by **gilnockie** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 8:07 pm

This probably needs a separate thread... Erron are you listening????

Has anyone had any experience with laminated wooden arrows? I have often wondered if they are available, how effective are they and are they legal for competition?

If you have not had any direct experience, how does this grab you: shafts laminated from timber 0.6mm thick, various colours such as white, gold and brown (2 shades) and any combination of of the various colours.

Yes you guessed it, for those who have read my ramblings, they are furniture veneers.

If anyone who makes their own arrows by starting with a piece of timber and cutting it into billets and rounding the billets into dowels is interested, I will supply the timbers in a laminated sheet, ready to be cut into billets.

The price is a set of dowels made from a sheet of laminated veneers.

Is anyone interested in this offer?

Tuffcity · #2 Post by **Tuffcity** » Sun Feb 22, 2004 6:32 am

You might run into some spine issues. To give you an example, a friend of mine glued a thin strip of purple heart in between two pieces of (I believe) fir then ran them through a shaft shooter. They looked really cool but they spined about a 100# one way but when rotated 90 degrees they were a lot less.

RC

erron · #3 Post by **erron** » Sun Feb 22, 2004 9:04 am

This probably needs a separate thread... Erron are you listening????

- your wish is my command, Norman!

Erron

Griffo · #4 Post by **Griffo** » Sun Feb 22, 2004 10:28 am

How do these grab you?

gilnockie · #5 Post by **gilnockie** » Sun Feb 22, 2004 10:50 am

Tuffcity

I normally shoot carbons or alloys from my longbows although I like to shoot woods as they seem to suit the longbows very well. Consequently I don't normally make them.

In discussions with friends who do, It seems as though you run the grain lines at right angles to the string to get the maximum stiffness. If laminated shafts such as I describe are so stiff, then it should follow that they would be lighter and hence have better cast.

I do not want to re-open the debate about kinetic energy vs momentum and I concede that they may not be the best arrow for hunting. However, if they are thinner and lighter for a given spine weight, they should be good for competition.

The unknown quantity is whether a significant difference in spine will adversely affect the flight of the arrow. If proves to be a problem then I could laminate the centre of the sheet as softwood and the outer surfaces as hardwoods.

Is anyone interested in pursuing this idea if I supply the laminated boards?

Griffo

Stunning, mate, simply stunning.

erron · #6 Post by **erron** » Sun Feb 22, 2004 11:26 am

Yes Norman, I agree: stunning arrows from Steve Wallace, Griffo. Pity Steve doesn't drop by Ozbow now and again...

Erron

MIK · #7 Post by **MIK** » Sun Feb 22, 2004 8:38 pm

those arrows are fantastic if only ...

well i am the new kid on the block and eventually i would like to give it a go with the laminations however i think it may be a bit beyond me at this present period in time .... one could go by the name "Tim the Toolman"

i love the look of arrows that are different ... check these ones out they are wrapped in rattle snake skin, turkey feathers, flint knapped points which are tied in with sinew, walnut footings and self nocks .... i have plans to make a set of these tooo...

Buford · #8 Post by **Buford** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 4:40 pm

gilnockie,

there is a laminated shaft available to buy, they are called hex pine shafts.

they aren't laminated in the way you are talking about though. to get around the uneven spine issue they are laminated in a spiral (if you look at them from the end)
i have attached a pic (hand drawn!) it is suppost to be an end on view of the shaft.

in my limited experience, they are hard to keep straight/ straighten.

i haven't used any myself, have just made a few sets up for some people, so i don't know about strength etc. but the most interesting thing is they are hollow down the centre!

whitings wherehouse sell em', so maybe if you give ruth a call she might be able to give more info.

cheers
buford

#9 Post by **Stickbow Hunter** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 5:35 pm

Nice lookin' arras fellas, especially the snake skin ones!

As Buford said, keeping the hex shafts straight can be a problem.

In all honesty I like natural timber as opposed to a laminated shaft.

Jeff

Glenn Newell · #10 Post by **Glenn Newell** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 7:31 pm

Gilnockie thats a good idea mate for the arrow shafts, I have been making my own action wood for my bow risers of late, have you thought of or have you done any for risers?...Glenn...

gilnockie · #11 Post by **gilnockie** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 8:19 pm

Glenn

I have some ideas for laminating risers from veneers. I will play with this when I start to make recurves, hopefully later in the year. I figure that I can generate some interesting patterns by mixing the various veneers.

If you are interested, I reinforced the limbs of an old target bow with carbon fibre and set it up to shoot off the shelf. The draw weight increased from 30# to 43#. It is too noisy for hunting as the limbs sit loosely in sockets in the riser and the limbs twang when I loose.

But it shoots well and I hope to shoot barebow recurve in competition this year.

Glenn Newell · #12 Post by **Glenn Newell** » Tue Feb 24, 2004 5:43 am

Norm, I use to import Sky recurves from Earl J Hoyt, they were one of the best t.d. recurves made in there day, they had a bit of noise when they were shot also like most take downs, I use to apply thread seal tape to the limb bolts, this made them a quiet as a one piece. Normally the limb bolts are a fairly course thread and tightening them as much as you can wont do a thing to stopping noise from them, the thread seal tape just takes up the play between the limb bolt and the riser receiver, you should only have to nip them up instead tightening them up to much with the tape.
I haven't made any bows with carbon in them but another brand of traditional bow I use to import from the States use to make bows with carbon in the limbs, normally the carbon was the centre lamination but the bowyer told me that if you used the carbon as the belly lamination that will make the bow peform the best a far as speed is concerned, but he also said that the down side is that when thay had a dryfire not one bow stayed together there were no second chances with it. so putting the carbon in the centre of the limb no only looked good but was a necessiaty...Glenn...

gilnockie · #13 Post by **gilnockie** » Tue Feb 24, 2004 8:20 pm

Glen

Thanks for the tips.

First, Gunns veneers makes a 1.5mm veneer from "Tas Oak" one of the local eucalypts. I have some and it is very springy and when laminated into a piece about 20mm thick is quite rigid over a length of 600mm. You may find this a cheap alternative to Rock Maple. If you stain the shaped riser, I suspect that the appearance would be similar and the mechanical properties would be about the same. Depending on the thickness of your layers, it may even look better. Particularly if you interleave laaayers of contrasting timbers such as Celery Top Pine or Golden Sassafrass

Second, with regard to the noisy recurve, the limbs fit into sockets and are held in by a light leaf spring and the string. There are no limb bolts.

Third, with regard to the fragility of the carbon on the belly of the recurve, I am aware of how brittle it is and I will not be dry firing it, except by accident. I have glued a light layer of glass over the carbon which should protect it from knocks etc.. If it blows up, it blows up. It is an experiment to confirm some earlier work with carbon fibre.

With my longbows I am developing a carbon/glass composite which should have the toughness and strength of glass and the stiffness of carbon. When I have proved this to my satisfaction, I will start to use the same laminates in recurves with either timber or solid glass as the core.

Finally, with regard to the use of carbon in the centre of the limbs I have seen several references to this on the Web and I cannot understand why the bowyers bother to use it, other than as means of absorbing energy and reducing vibrations in the limbs. If you regard the limbs of a bow as two cantilevered beams which are designed to deflect progressively under load, then the centre of the limb, the layer of carbon, is in the neutral plane which is not subject to tension or compression forces. The carbon does nothing except act as a lightweight separator, and perhaps deadens the vibration set up by energy which was not absorbed by the arrow.

doninkaliphornistan · #14 Post by **doninkaliphornistan** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 7:50 am

i purchased some laminated birch aeros that are very strong and durable but are very stiff in spine as to what they are supposed to be rated at ... that is to say, they are heavy and very stiff even though they spine test at the poundage i ordered ...

it's very difficult to get them to fly properly from the bow i ordered them for ...

on the other hand ... i have made laminated aeros that work and fly very well,

however, making them is a "crap shoot" when it comes to the spine as the final spine is determined from the wood you have on hand to make them from.

they're ez and fun to make ...