Making Fully Painted Wood Arrows

I will describe some techniques I currently use to craft fully painted wooden arrows.

To straighten I typically roll the shaft as described in this video, but I use a little heat gun and the palm of my hand to bend instead of the roller.  I feel that crushing the wood fibers is not the best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hv8mauTlhY

After straightening with a little heat gun work, I will nock taper each shaft.

Then, because grain and proper nock orientation will be difficult to determine once the shafts are full painted, I mark a line on the taper where I want the indexer of the nock to be.  This part will not get painted. 

Grain orientation is important.

Then, I can screw on a standard large sized electrical connection wire nut that I screwed a small hook into, right onto the taper.  This does not deform the taper and holds the arrow tight. 

This hook can now be used to suspend the arrow shaft from a line or nail while drying.

The clothespins here are just to maintain separation on the line.  I used to use them to clamp onto the wire nut before I used the hooks.

Here you can see my dip tube setup and the old arrow box I have there to catch the drips after dipping.



































If I want to point or tail taper I do this by hand with some 60 or 80 grit sandpaper.  I use a hole gauge when the shaft gets to the proper diameter.  I'll typically put about a 10 inch taper on the tail and 6 or so inches on the point end.  I currently have a stock of 23/64th POC and I barrel taper them this way.  If they are 11/32nd to start with I'll just tail taper down to 5/16th. 

I don't sand to a super smooth wood surface before painting.  The oil based will fill in small sanding marks and the finished product will still be smooth with good paint adhesion.

The paint I use is oil-based rustoleum in the can available at most big box hardware stores. I prefer gloss colors with a white base under bright colors.   The paint is a sealer.  If all wood is covered the paint acts as a sealer so I can skip the sealing step.   I get good adhesion from Duco cement on the paint over unfinished wood.  Duco is getting harder to find, and more expensive, but still worth the trouble in my opinion.

You can also brush on the un-thinned rustoleum paint with a foam brush with pretty good results.  I did this for years.  The oil-based paint will spread out and hide most brush lines if you are slow and careful.  Dipping thinned paint wastes more paint, but seems to be quicker and smoother.

I dip with 3 coats of paint thinned with paint thinner to a whole milk type consistency, sanding between the dried coats with 0000 steel wool.  Pour the thinned paint from the dip tube back into a mason jar while the shafts dry.  I can put on a coat of 6 shafts in about 10 minutes.

Unscrew the wire nut and glue on the nock using the index line you made earlier.

Then comes the burning with the Young feather burner.

The painted shafts are ready to hunt.