Bamboo shafts...

Hudzi93

New member
Hi, so I've bought some tonkin bamboo shafts and I'm in the process if building arrows. At the moment I'm cutting the shafts to length and drilling them for points and nocks.

The bamboo has a soft centre that powders when you poke at it and I was wondering if it was safe to remove this stuff throughout the shaft? Surely it's just adding extra weight and is not very useful to the arrow? That's my thought anyway but I figured I'd confirm this before I went ahead and removed it all!

Thanks
 

Berny

Active member
The nodes will get in the way - you'd have to force your way through them all - not worth the bother - leave well alone.
If it ain't broke don't fix it!
 

Hudzi93

New member
Does the hollow of the bamboo get really narrow at the node points? I initially though it was uniformly hollow all the way through, but if that's not the case then I'll just leave them as they are.
 

Raven's_Eye

Active member
Ironman
Just to let you know, under GNAS & BLBS rules you will not be able to use bamboo shafts if you are shooting with an ELB as bamboo is a grass not wood, if you are not shooting to these rules then no problem just keeping you informed.
 

Hudzi93

New member
I'm currently shooting a kg osprey which is more like a recurve. I might get a hungarian bow or similar in the future but I don't plan on shooting an ELB. I think I'd be shooting in the barebow category for these bows
 

Berny

Active member
I believe & it should be documented on another earlier thread here that GNAS do accept boos, ditto NFAS.
BLBS recently at their AGM continued the bar on boos.

Just to let you know, under GNAS & BLBS rules you will not be able to use bamboo shafts if you are shooting with an ELB as bamboo is a grass not wood, if you are not shooting to these rules then no problem just keeping you informed.
 

Hudzi93

New member
I'm currently drilling the shafts at the point in and need to drill about 1.6 inches. 4 out of the 6 shafts have a node about 2 inches from the point end and I am finding it near impossible to drill through these!! I've gotten in about half an inch but its very slow going and seems to be refusing to budge.

The other two shafts with the node further away were drilled within seconds. I'm not quite sure how to go about this but I guess I could keep drilling and see how it goes, but it might take me like 10 minutes per shaft. I'm afraid of damaging them in the process and the shafts heat up quite a bit too.
 

Hudzi93

New member
I've finished the arrows now and have uploaded the pictures below. I'm very pleased with them considering they're the first set of arrows I've built 😊

I only had access to a straight clamp fletching jig so I just used that to mark the shafts with pencil then I did the helical fletching by hand.


 

Hudzi93

New member
It turns out that the shaft is solid at the nodes and hollow in the sections in between. When I was drilling the shaft for the points, I had to drill past a node on some of the shafts and it took a lot longer to get through them.
 
Top