Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Bowhunting Heavy wood arrows?

Looking to keep things as traditional as possible. I have a recurve that is #58 @28” and I draw at 31”. So at my draw length it’s about #72. I would like to shoot heavier single bevel broadheads. Thinking 250-300 grain. Not because I need to but want to. Is there a heavy enough spine wood arrow to handle that heavy of a broad head at my draw weight in 31”? Carbon has always been the easy button but I would like to have wood arrows.

It all depends on how you hunt and your expectations.

The heavier you shoot , the more drop you get in trajectory.

When I hunted the Midwest and the average shot was 10 yards no big deal.

Out west the critters show up farther away

Make your own arrows from river cane like the Indians did. Usually had a hardwood insert to hold the arrowhead or broadhead. Turkey feather fletching. Plenty on YouTube or Tradational Bowyer books. The Southeastern Indians gave Desoto fits using these arrows with their 6 foot longbows. There were accounts of them killing their horses and penetrating the armor of the day. Sometimes they even used garfish scales as arrowheads. Dogwood is also a shaft material. Research it. There is a museum in Columbia Mo with the largest collection of Native American bows, arrows and quivers as stated in the Traditional Bowyer Books. Don’t know if it was 1 or II.

3 Rivers Archery has a spine calculator on their site which works well to get you close on spine for about any type of shaft/bow combo. With your setup, I'm coming up with a wood shaft spine of 140-150 lbs for a 32" arrow and 250 grain point.

All of the wood shaft suppliers I'm familiar with top out around 70-75 lbs which will be too weak at 72 lbs draw weight with a 32" arrow and 250 grain point. A quick search for heavier spine wood shafts turned up Forrester Wood Shafts. Never heard of them before and have no idea if they're legit or where they're located. Their site shows wood shaft spines over 100 lbs, so may be worth looking into:

https://forresterwoodshafts.com/col...rrow-shafts-23-64-diameter-spine-120-180

Thanks. I’ll give them a look. I think I read something about Ash shafts being fairly stout but after the emerald ash borer issues I’m not sure about availability anymore.

Angus. Most my bow hunting is close and even though I can hit effectively out to 40 yards or so I prefer 15 yards.

Carrollco. No River cane along Lake Superior. I’d be better off collecting maple whips. Plenty of turkey much to our chagrin as we see them as no good nest raiders on our ruffed grouse.

my son has a 72 lb. Black Widow long bow and we never seem to find wood arrow shafts to be very consistence so he now uses 2219 aluminum shafts with Zwickey Eskimo broadheads . son has a longer draw length too so finding good wood shafts is to hard to get so that is why he now uses 2219 aluminum shafts.

I started making my own longbows many years ago and went down the path of making my own wood shafts. Very labor intensive, but you're not limited to the common 11/32 or 23/64 diameters of commercial shafting. It's difficult to get spines over 70 lbs at 23/64 diameter, but by making your own, 3/8 or whatever diameter you need to get your spine is doable. I made mine from Fir and they were excellent shafts.

Just another option if you can't find what you need from suppliers...

I had good luck with hickory shafts from Pine Hollow Longbows. https://pinehollowlongbows.com/shop/ols/products/arrow-shafting-1132-hickory-by-the-dozen

Surewood shafts is the correct answer to any wood shaft questions…they had shafts up into the 100s last I looked.

I've used Surewood shafts - they're good. Checking their site, they currently show up to 100-105 lb spines. With a 32" arrow and a 135 gr point, 100 lb spine would be in the ball park. Wanting to use a 250 gr point on a 32" arrow at +70 lb draw weight is a real challenge.

I'm currently shooting a hybrid longbow of my own manufacture. It's a relatively high performance bow - 55 lb @ 28" and shoots 500 gr arrows over 190 fps (I draw 28"). I shoot 70-75 lbs spine wood arrows at 29" length and 125-135 gr points. If I wanted to shoot heavier points, 70-75 lb spine is too weak.

A significant bow spec that hasn't been discussed is the sight window on the bow. Is it cut to center, past center, etc. It makes a big difference on arrow spine. I assumed a sight window cut to the center of the bow for the OP's bow on the spine calculator.

I think if you’re set on 250-300 grain points you are going to have to look to carbon. If you can live with broadheads in the 125-145 range you can probably get wood to work.

Agreed, unless willing to make your own shafts at larger diameters...

The heavier the broad head the more it weakens the spine of the arrow. Usually you can shorten the arrow to gain back stiffness but at 31” draw there’s not much room to shorten standard shafts.
Google atlatl shafts and start there. 😆

When I googled for heavy spined shafts, I actually got hits for 1/2" diameter atlatl shafts

I've been rolling my own heavy wood shafts for more than 35 years. I use a router and a drill and homemade spine tester. Douglas fir is the best heavy arrow because it recovers from paradox faster than hardwoods. Maple is my favorite because it stays straight after using heat, is heavier than fir and doesn't chip out or splinter when straightening.

Things I learned about shooting homemade heavy arrows:
Heavy arrows fly better with heavy points.
Not many homemade arrows will spine out heavy enough for a 75-pound bow unless they are closer to 3/8" diameter or you find the unicorn of all boards.
Heavy weight bows are a bigger pain to tuning wooden arrows than lighter weight bows are.
Heavy weight bows are louder than lighter weight bows.
Shoot a heavy weight bow long enough you'll decide a lighter weight bow is just right following your second shoulder surgery.
If you're new to shooting tradition, then learn to shoot with aluminum or carbon first so you know it's not the arrow.
If you think you draw 28" then you probably only draw 27". In 45 years of shooting a bow I've seen a lot of 31" draw compound shooters but only a couple 31" trad shooters and they were 6'8" and could adjust the passenger mirror on their truck without leaning.
Be prepared to give up something if you start making your own arrow shafts because there is still only 24 hours in a day.
Successfully hunting with your own equipment makes it all worthwhile.

Great info! When I was making shafts, I used John Strunk's arrow plane, so all done by hand. If I was to make more, I'd do the router method you mentioned. The last batch of Fir shafts I made by hand planing, I ended up with 4 dozen matched spine and weight shafts. After much practice/trial and error, I had it down to 20 minutes per shaft to go from a square blank to a finished shaft. Hell of a lot of work, but the best arrow shafts I've ever used. I think I still have a couple dozen of them...

That's where it's at for me - I started making my own gear with Yew selfbows 30-some years ago, went to making laminated longbows, and am now getting the itch to go back to selfbows.