birch arrow shafts

[the green man]

i have just got hold of a supply of birch arrow shafts does any one have any experience of using this wood as oppossed to pine or p. o. c are there any draw backs with this as an arrow shaft the shafts were bought as unspined are 5/16 the few i have made seem to shoot well out of my 32lb bow is there an easy way to test the spine without the expense of buying a spine tester
any thoughts on this would be welcome
cheers for now
the green man

[alanesq]

I am using birch shafts at the moment for both my target and my war arrows with no problem (although to tell the truth I have not noticed any real difference between any of the woods I have used)

I made one of these spine testers
JCs Spine Tester
its easy to make seems to work well and best of all costs almost nothing to make :-)

[jeduffey]

I've seen listings for arrows made of anything you can get in your hands. There certainly nothing wrong with birch. I saw a maple arrow that was really nice and few oak. If you get a round dowel cutter, you can make shafts of any material you can put through it.

Alanesq, thanks for the spine tester link. It is great to have information on effective, simple, inexpensive archery tools.

Here is another one.
PA Spine Tester
For those like a digital touch, you can build this tester
Jim Hill's Spine Tester

Consider that spine testers, with some small tweeking, can be used to test for straightness. Quality multi-tasking is a sign of a valuable tool.