Arrow Selection

[CRUSADE14]

Hopefully coming over to longbow shooting soon. Has any one got any advice on arrow selection. Wood versus Ally? Size and type of wood. I will be shooting around 45lb to 50lb at a short draw of around 26", what spine would be required? What is the best way to attach fletching, glue or thread? A lot of questions, sorry hope someone can help. We have got an experianced longbow archer at the club, but a few different veiws would be good.

[phil_r_58]

Longbow and allys, sacrilege !!! I've always found allys with wooden bows to sound awful. I would suspect something to do with the flexing of alloy being too rapid and out of sync with a wooden bows relatively slow cast maybe.

[CRUSADE14]

I agree phil r, I didnt think allys would be any good for a longbow, unless anyone out there feels differently, i would consider wooden arrows as the ideal, but what type of wood?

[steve58]

And if you intend to shoot GNAS competitions the rules say wooden shafts fletched with natural feather.

Plenty of good advice on arrows in other threads on this part of the forum, seek and ye shall find!

Personally I have found that to be able to see the boss at 100 yards I have to use Sitka Spruce shafts with a rear taper and a 63 grain pile. I get the bits from HiForce Arrows and assemble them myself.

Anything below that I can use pine shafts (heavier but more robust) and a 100 grain pile at least.

You will have to experiment and find what suits, again there is plenty of good advice to be found on the process (MacBow in particular has put some very detailed info up that has helped me). At last wooden arrows are fairly cheap to make.

[phil_r_58]

I have always preferred port orford cedar, but I'm told it's getting hard to get nowadays.

I can't give definitive advice though, as I shoot "graphite" shafts, sounds more natural than carbon LOL. But visually, I cannot think of anything better looking than a well fletched and whipped wooden shaft with horn inset nocks.