The Cord Age
Tiro
Offline
Slinging Rocks!
Posts: 23
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I'm an intermittent archer, but I've got some free time this Summer, and thought it might be a great opportunity to make a proper -- i.e. decent -- atlatl set. I've made quickie atlatls before, but they've usually consisted of 'stuff I've picked up in the woods and whittled'. They've worked after a fashion, but not in the way Paleoaleo's / Paleoarts / and Atlatl Bob's have.
I already know where I can source the flint and slate for the arrowheads, the wood for the foreshafts / tailshafts / atlatl itself (it's all around me), the pine pitch (ditto), the feathers for the fletching (ditto) and the sinew for reinforcement and binding.
Where I'm stuck for ideas is on the best place to source the dart shafts which, after all, are actually the most important bits. I could go into the forests and try and source some saplings / branches, then dry them, but that would a.) take too long and b.) still wouldn't necessarily guarantee the right kind of spine without a lot of rasping / sanding. I could also go around the builder's merchants / garden centres looking for the right kind of bamboo / cane staves, but I've been told this is very hit and miss.
Does anyone have good ideas where to source approximately correctly-spined shafts in the UK? I don't mind doing the 'straighten over a heat source' thing (in fact, it's quite therapeutic), but I don't want to spend days sanding to get a decent spine. I'm looking for shafts that probably bend in the 8-10 pound region. Any ideas?
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