Roll your own arrows anyone?
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HOME MADE
I have been putting togather my own arrows since dirt,but no masterpieces.
Just mostly functional!
I have been putting togather my own arrows since dirt,but no masterpieces.
Just mostly functional!
Joined
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211 Posts
I'm a tinkerer almost to a fault and get alot of enjoyment out of experimenting with arrows, cartridge reloads, pretty much anything...
I've only had my crossbow for about a year and am still trying differnt things before settling on one "main" setup, however I've been shooting verticle bows since I was old enough to shoot one and building my own arrows almost as long
I did a major revamp of my crossbow arrows just recently and posted it on another forum, for the sake of saving me retyping it all I'm just going to quote the couple comments I made there...
"it seems as though there isnt any brass inserts for the beman thunderbolts, at least that I can find anyway, and from what I gather brass gold tips are slightly bigger and wont fit the thunderbolts, which I guess is better than too small because, if need be, I could just shave them down to make them work, which would be a fair ammount of messing around considering I'd have to cut them down to get the desired weight too
I also dont have any brass inserts on hand... but I did a little alumin. insert refabing and came up with a good and fairly easy way of increasing my inserts weight without going into a big ordeal, I also found a decent way to rework inserts for my nocks(which are inserts too) and make them work, which put my arrows right in the area of weight and FOC that I was looking for...
so, with beman thunderbolts, my new nocks, feathers, my new inserts, and 125gr heads I came out at 434gr OA with a FOC of 18%, IMO thats not bad for beman thunderbolts, they're actually about 4gr's lighter now than they were but have alot more FOC... so I'm happy now
then the broadhead testing begins...
I was going to wait until this summer to start messing with this stuff but the way things are going it looks like I'll have it all sorted out by spring"
"well, I've had the last couple weeks off and its been cold so I've had the chance to mess with my stuff alot, besides putting together the arrows above I also put together a few test 2213's
I shoot 85gr thunderheads out of my vertical bow and really like them, however I really DONT like the 125gr thunderheads I bought for my crossbow... I gave three of the 85gr thunderheads to my son and kept three for myself in case I get the urge to hunt with my vertical bow, but I got the brainstorm of rigging up some more inserts to be used with the 85gr thunderheads and my crossbow, and they came out very well
this is what I came up with... 2213's, 85gr tip, weighted insert, cut down insert for nock(13gr), and feathers came to 435gr OA with a FOC of 17.3% with the thunderheads, stat-wise they turned out to be an almost exact copy of the above carbon arrows..."
I still havent gotten a chance to do much shooting, I did shoot the 2213's a few times at my deer target and the POI was the exact same as the carbons and the 2216's I was using before I redid everything and they definitely shot good, in fact at 25 yards off-hand I was grouping them so close it was difficult to get ahold of just one arrow to pull it out...
I still havent done any broadhead testing though and to me thats the real test
I've only had my crossbow for about a year and am still trying differnt things before settling on one "main" setup, however I've been shooting verticle bows since I was old enough to shoot one and building my own arrows almost as long
I did a major revamp of my crossbow arrows just recently and posted it on another forum, for the sake of saving me retyping it all I'm just going to quote the couple comments I made there...
"it seems as though there isnt any brass inserts for the beman thunderbolts, at least that I can find anyway, and from what I gather brass gold tips are slightly bigger and wont fit the thunderbolts, which I guess is better than too small because, if need be, I could just shave them down to make them work, which would be a fair ammount of messing around considering I'd have to cut them down to get the desired weight too
I also dont have any brass inserts on hand... but I did a little alumin. insert refabing and came up with a good and fairly easy way of increasing my inserts weight without going into a big ordeal, I also found a decent way to rework inserts for my nocks(which are inserts too) and make them work, which put my arrows right in the area of weight and FOC that I was looking for...
so, with beman thunderbolts, my new nocks, feathers, my new inserts, and 125gr heads I came out at 434gr OA with a FOC of 18%, IMO thats not bad for beman thunderbolts, they're actually about 4gr's lighter now than they were but have alot more FOC... so I'm happy now
then the broadhead testing begins...
I was going to wait until this summer to start messing with this stuff but the way things are going it looks like I'll have it all sorted out by spring"
"well, I've had the last couple weeks off and its been cold so I've had the chance to mess with my stuff alot, besides putting together the arrows above I also put together a few test 2213's
I shoot 85gr thunderheads out of my vertical bow and really like them, however I really DONT like the 125gr thunderheads I bought for my crossbow... I gave three of the 85gr thunderheads to my son and kept three for myself in case I get the urge to hunt with my vertical bow, but I got the brainstorm of rigging up some more inserts to be used with the 85gr thunderheads and my crossbow, and they came out very well
this is what I came up with... 2213's, 85gr tip, weighted insert, cut down insert for nock(13gr), and feathers came to 435gr OA with a FOC of 17.3% with the thunderheads, stat-wise they turned out to be an almost exact copy of the above carbon arrows..."
I still havent gotten a chance to do much shooting, I did shoot the 2213's a few times at my deer target and the POI was the exact same as the carbons and the 2216's I was using before I redid everything and they definitely shot good, in fact at 25 yards off-hand I was grouping them so close it was difficult to get ahold of just one arrow to pull it out...
I still havent done any broadhead testing though and to me thats the real test
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What did you use for the extra weight?
you never said how you got the aluminum insets to be heavier. No keeping secrets.
you never said how you got the aluminum insets to be heavier. No keeping secrets.
Joined
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5,031 Posts
I've been using GT Lazer II shafts, 100 gr brass inserts and 2" Blazer vanes; tipping with 100 gr Slick Trick mags. This gives me a FOC ratio over 20%. They're accurate and fly like darts out of my 320 fps bows. Same POI as fieldpoints too.
One trick I learned on another site is to spray the back 7" with white lacquer, then an inch or so of florescent overspray that matches the color of the vanes
(opposite the end where the vanes go).
This not only makes my bolts more visible in flight but causes the GoatTuff and LocTite Gel glues I use to stick very well. As a plus, vanes scrape off cleanly when it's time to refletch and the lacquer cleans right up with acetone. Best of all: serve same function as wraps but much cheaper, easier to remove and weighs less than 1 oz.
One trick I learned on another site is to spray the back 7" with white lacquer, then an inch or so of florescent overspray that matches the color of the vanes
(opposite the end where the vanes go).
This not only makes my bolts more visible in flight but causes the GoatTuff and LocTite Gel glues I use to stick very well. As a plus, vanes scrape off cleanly when it's time to refletch and the lacquer cleans right up with acetone. Best of all: serve same function as wraps but much cheaper, easier to remove and weighs less than 1 oz.
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Joined
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6,085 Posts
Thanks for the link. I've been doing this for years. The best part is the price. For what the paint costs, you can do dozens of arrows at a fraction of the price of what wraps would cost.
Well, I am in the process of my first roll your own recipe. . .I'm putting blazers on 2216 and 2219 aluminum shafts. I use inserts for nocks. I'm using full inserts so I can pull the out with my pull out tool. Now that my arrows are in the 450gr range, they tend to pierce my target! Pulling out by the insert should help. We'll see. Even with 125gr points, my FOC is a bit low, but they are shooting well up to this point.
The fletching has been a struggle to get perfect. I'm trying to shoot a helical fletch on blazers, so maybe I'm asking for too much!
The fletching has been a struggle to get perfect. I'm trying to shoot a helical fletch on blazers, so maybe I'm asking for too much!
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Has anyone used the NAP Speed Hunter vane? You can fletch them straight but they still spin the arrow like a helical.
Helical on Blazers
They are short so I make up for that with helical and short vanes are easier to fletch with lots of helical than 4 or 5 inch vanes IMO.
I tried some 2" NAP Quick Spin type vanes. They are quite a bit more expensive than Blazers and I see no advantage using them since I alread put lots of helical on my Blazers.
They are short so I make up for that with helical and short vanes are easier to fletch with lots of helical than 4 or 5 inch vanes IMO.
I tried some 2" NAP Quick Spin type vanes. They are quite a bit more expensive than Blazers and I see no advantage using them since I alread put lots of helical on my Blazers.
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211 Posts
no real point here... but my brother is down to just a few arrows and mentioned yesterday about buying some more, I brought one of his arrows home just to see what the deal is with them, they're horton carbon strikes with 5" feathers and 100gr points and weighed 410gr, surprisingly they only had a FOC of 9%... I set him up a couple 2213's with 4" feathers and some other little weight transfer tricks and came up with 410gr's and a FOC of 17% with 100gr points, 435gr's and a FOC of 19% with 125gr points, if we dont get the big dump of snow tomorrow that we're supposed to get we're going to do some testing tomorrow... and I'll probably end up having to build another dozen arrows...
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