The Art of Arrow Making - Bamboo & River Cane (Chapter 3)

Welcome back everyone to the Organic Archery YouTube channel. Today's video is part three in the six-part Art of Arrow Making series and today I'm going to cover a technique that can be used to make arrows from river cane, bamboo, reeds, and even the common bamboo garden stakes you find at the big box stores. Some type of river cane or bamboo was one of the most widespread arrow making materials in human history. It would have been used throughout Asia and the tropical islands of the East, Central Africa, South America, Mexico, and the Southeastern United States. I live about four hours drive from the nearest river cane but the way I stock up is each year I go down to an outdoor skills event in Arkansas and the land where the event is held is covered in river cane and the owners have been kind enough to let us cut as much as we want. So with me being so far away from river cane you guys aren't going to get any live cutting footage today but there are plenty of tutorials out there if you want to see somebody go out into the woods and cut these fresh. I think it's pretty self-explanatory. You just go out into a stand of bamboo or river cane and you cut the ones that are the same diameter as the arrows you're trying to make. There's going to be no shortage of materials in a river cane or bamboo stand so you can get as OCD as you want with it. This bundle here is matched in both diameter and node distance and then this bundle here is only matched in diameter and the nodes are kind of all over the place. I tend to gravitate towards making arrows that are matched in diameter and just letting the nodes fall where they may. So one of the obvious pros of this material is it's already pretty much shaped like an arrow so all we have to do to get these ready is get them dry if you're cutting it fresh and do a little bit of straightening with some heat. I like to season my river cane for at least two months and that's on the far low end of the spectrum but it does tend to dry out quite a bit quicker than wood. Everything I have here in the shop has been seasoned for at least one to two years just because the volume of river cane I'm bringing in is far more than the number of arrows I'm making so it all tends to sit around for quite a while before I get around to it. But one thing I would advise against is force drying river cane or bamboo when it's green. These chambers in between the nodes are hollow and they're sealed and the cane has a bunch of moisture in it when it's green so if you were to force dry it over say a fire you'll build up a bunch of steam pressure inside of those chambers and they'll pop and sort of blow the side walls of the river cane apart and it essentially ruins the material. So in my opinion air dried is always best with river cane and bamboo. That's pretty much it for the intro to this material. It's a pretty straightforward process so we're going to get these straight and then I'll show you guys how to carve nocks in them and I like to plug the point end with a piece of wood so I can put the industry standard five degree taper on them so that they can accommodate all of the commercially available points. Let's get right into it. I grabbed a handful of cane from my stash in the loft and like I mentioned before if you guys want to see these harvested in the wild there are plenty of tutorials out there but it's a pretty self-explanatory process if you live in a region where bamboo or river cane grows. Some of these are river cane and some are switch cane but both make fantastic arrows in my experience and I've got a couple bundles here sorted from smallest diameter on the left to largest diameter on the right. When I'm trying to make a matched set of arrows from river cane or bamboo I like to match both the diameter and the wall thickness. You can see how much of a difference there is in the wall thickness between these two pieces of river cane and that's going to have a pretty significant effect on the weight and stiffness of the arrow and this is just another great example of why you should always harvest more natural materials than you think you'll need for a set of arrows. Here I've got six that are matched in diameter and wall thickness and it's been a little while since I've made a set from river cane so I've got some spares in the background in case I break any of these during the straightening process. Some people like to match all of the nodes so they end up with really symmetrical sets but I'm mostly interested in matching the first node on the knock end of the arrow. What that's going to do is give me one full length of smooth material to attach my fletchings to without having to run the feathers over any of these nodes. My favorite tool for cutting river cane and bamboo is this little pipe cutter and most hardware stores carry these and they're fairly inexpensive but you can also just score it all the way around with a pocket knife or cut it with a saw or whatever you have access to but you can see how nice of a cut this pipe cutter makes without damaging any of the fibers. I've got all six of these cut on the knock end and a nice smooth section for applying the feathers later. These are still about 36 inches long and I'm going to leave them this length for now because it'll make straightening easier. My favorite method for straightening is over a small bed of hot coals but it is really cold outside today so I'm just going to use this paint stripping heat gun and I don't really consider this a luxury tool because most hardware stores carry these for less than 50 bucks. The standard tip on these works just fine but most of them come with a little pack of accessories and I like this one that concentrates the heat into a long narrow strip. Arrow straightening wrenches were made from all kinds of materials throughout history and it's not really a necessary tool. You can do the whole process freehand but I like these. This one's just a 45 degree hole drilled through a stick with the edges that will contact the arrow rounded off. If you have any sharp square edges you could collapse the cane. You simply slide the arrow through once it's warmed up and the wrench gives you the ability to make concentrated corrections. And yes it'll be very hot so if that bothers you wear some gloves. So my favorite strategy for getting these straight is to do all of the sections in between the nodes first and then you'll end up with a bunch of slightly zigzagged straight lines and you can go back after everything's cooled off and align everything with the nodes. But I know some makers like to do it in the opposite order and align the nodes first and then go back to the straight sections but it all boils down to personal preference so try both and see which one you like better. The arrow wrench puts a lot of leverage into the equation so I like to do multiple rounds of smaller adjustments instead of just trying to get it all in one go. If you really crank on this thing you'll probably just collapse the sidewalls of the arrow. And anytime I'm freehand straightening with just my palm I like to use a scrap piece of leather or a glove on my straightening hand to keep from getting burned. As the arrow warms up it'll first turn very glossy and then right after that it'll turn to a golden brown color. And anywhere between that gloss and a golden brown is perfect for adjustments. You never want to scorch this thing any farther than light brown or you'll risk damaging the plant cells and making the arrows brittle. The sections you've already adjusted will stay hot for quite some time so I like to use the arrow wrench to save my fingers. This is just another angle to show you how little pressure it takes to make an adjustment with an arrow wrench. Now I have all of the internodal sections straight but the nodes are still out of alignment. Here's a look at all six in the same stage of completion. Now comes the tricky part that requires some finesse because the nodes are the weakest link. You definitely don't want to overheat these nodes or they might snap outright. So don't heat them past a golden brown and remember you can reheat this as many times as you need so take your time and make smaller adjustments especially if it requires a major correction. Sometimes they fight you and sometimes all it takes is a little correction and I broke quite a few river cane arrows when I was first learning how to straighten them so don't get discouraged. As with all things you'll get better with practice. River cane arrows don't have to look like they were made by a machine. It's okay to have a few little wiggles and so long as you give straightening an honest effort you'll get good arrow flight. Now that these are all straight I trim mine to a length of 32 inches. Since river cane and bamboo arrows are hollow, I like to plug the point end with a little piece of wood. That way I can put the industry standard five degree taper on them and use whichever gluon points I want. It only needs to go about an inch into the arrow and you'll probably have to shape each one by hand but it goes pretty quickly. Just make sure they don't fit too tightly or you'll split the arrow. I like mine to be just snug. Here you can see all the plugs are just a little different in size. I like to scrape the waxy outer coating off the area where the fletchings will go. Usually if you try to glue them to this waxy outer layer they'll start to fall off after just a few shots. Here's a side-by-side comparison with the top one scraped and the bottom one waxy. Next I like to smooth the nodes just a little bit with some 120 sandpaper and my goal is not to make them perfectly flat. I'm just taking the sharp edges off so they're not so abrupt. If you sand them too much you'll compromise the integrity of the arrow. At this stage they are straightened, plugged on the point end, the nodes are sanded, and the nock end where the fletching will be applied has been debarked. I'm using the same set of tools I used in the previous two chapters to carve the nocks. If you guys want to see the detailed tool breakdown and a step-by-step nock carving tutorial I covered that in chapter one. Here's a quick note on the orientation of the nocks right before I cut these. With river cane and bamboo I really don't think it matters which direction you cut your nocks but you'll notice they have these alternating leaves that run up the arrow and they leave these deep divots and I personally like to cut my nocks parallel to those leaves so that they're facing up and down when they're on the bow string. That puts these two sides that are a little more smooth up against my bow but again I really don't think it matters that much. I know some of you will be curious about the weight so I'm going to weigh these in the background while I talk about arrow spine. In case you haven't noticed throughout this series I'm not the biggest advocate for obsessing over spine. I used to have an ace spine master on the wall but it mostly collected dust and after a few thousand arrows you get pretty good at judging the spine by feel. The way I make my bow handles makes them very forgiving of spine so I really like to get them in the ballpark by feel and then tune them in real time with the bow I intend to pair them with. But if you like spine testers by all means go for it. I just prefer to do it this way. That's it for this chapter guys. As you can see making arrow shafts from river cane and bamboo is a pretty straightforward process. I ended up with six almost perfectly symmetrical arrows with a weight variance of about 60 grains or so and for natural materials and for reasonable stick bow hunting distances these are going to work just fine. If you were a competitive target archer or you know if you were shooting these outside of say 25 yards you might notice the heavier ones dropping more than the lighter ones but I'm not too worried about it. You'll see this set again in chapter five when I choose a fletching style for them and in chapter six when I put some points on them and I know some of you guys are probably ready to see all these arrows fly but chapter one through four is just showing you how to gather the raw materials and turn them into arrow shafts. Chapter five is going to show you three or four different fletching styles and chapter six will cover some different point styles with a focus on homemade broadheads. Before I sign off I wanted to remind you that if you've ever wanted to build your very own primitive longbow from start to finish using only simple hand tools the organic archery bow making workshops are live on my site. Our first class this year is in mid-March and I think we still have one or two spots available for that one but you can view my full course schedule down in the link that I will leave in the description of this video. Over the last few years we've hosted over 100 students and not a single person has left here without a bow they can be proud of. Thanks for watching and I hope to see you again in chapter four where I'm going to show you how to make arrow shafts from hardwood shoots gathered in the wild.