I have always heard that a aluminum arrow with even the slightest bend or warp in it will never fly straight.But at the same time a wood arrow that is not straight often times will fly perfect.I am wondering why that is.Or is there any truth behind this belief in wood arrow forgiveness.

Thor -

Ah, no.

I do believe that a lot of people who prefer wood arrow will accept a lower degree of precision.

Viper out.

Viper, do you shoot wood? If a person will take time to keep their woods straight they fly exceptionally well. AND, in my own experience, some small degree of curve is tolerated and still shoot accurately. Maybe on a small margin or at distances much further than I care to shoot, it would really make a difference. I am just not an aluminum fan, so those answers on how much one will allow and still shoot it will take another person.

-Bones

Viper you are wrong. While a wood arrow that is not perfect will not fly perfect, put the same bend in an aluminum arrow and the bad flight will often be more obvious. On three of my longbows I shoot mostly aluminum arrows for target and 3d, simply easier. A kinky low grade wood bunny arrow often is more accurate than an aluminum with a bend in just the right spot. With past center shot recurves the results may be different. Those kinky chundo shafts, never could get them perfect, but for many they flew as good as anything else. Of course, some don't know what they are doing with wood arrows and have a hard time getting them to work for them.

IMPO Not a matter of accepting a lower degree of precision at all.

Understanding that alum arrow is bent and wood arrow is warped. When alum is bent, it's bent and if you don't check prior to shooting you'll pretty much see it in flight going away from your target. Nothing will help it recover in flight. Wood though may be warped, because it will still flex through flight it may not be as noticeable if you hadn't check prior to shooting as the weighted tip pulls it through it's flexing.

2X what Viper said.

Jim, you are wrong too.

I don’t see how warped or bent are different. The process that causes each one may vary, but the result is the same.

MP

alum bent is fixed non flexing, wood warped not fixed flexing

If a wood arrow is spined and straight it should fly well if care was taken to set the nock on each arrow with the grain running at 90 degrees's so flex is on the strong side every time.Larry Yien shot woodies for years and shot some awesome groups with them.

The back of an arrow will follow the front of the arrow if there is no interference along the way. I have some bent aluminum arrows, but because they are tuned well, they flex away from the riser as they should and the back follows the front...right to the target. So you can't make a blanket statement about what an arrow will do. If there is a bend/kink that won't allow flex, then you will likely have issues.

I have an arrow straightener that keeps them ticking for a long time, even with slight wobbles on the spin. I don't use them for hunting though, only stumping or other shooting. My old fiberglass arrows are always straight, as are newer carbons..as long as they aren't crushed. Wood is also a great shaft that will fly even when not near perfect. At least that has been my experience.

I love my wood arrows,,I just get a bit closer to make up for the lower degree of precision,, then the arrows made from shoots mayber a bit closer and so on ,, etc etc etc,,its all fun for me,,are we supposed to have fun???? :)

If the nock is true to the point a wood, bamboo or cane shaft can be as wiggly as a snake in between and fly like a dart.

I will say this one thing in honesty; I know there is a reason for ACC's being made. I cannot shoot the Bows I have nearly good enough to actually see the difference in them and a Target Bow with someone like Viper or Magera, and not even saying I could compare shooting theirs!lol I shoot good enough to eat though,,ho hum,,

Capstick on why we hunt.

Wood arrow forgiveness? Yes, I have forgiven them for the pain they've caused me over the years. But that doesn't mean I'm gonna shoot them if given a choice;).

everyone always says if one has a bend will hurt you but it can help you too! haha

"Wood arrow forgiveness? Yes, I have forgiven them for the pain they've caused me over the years...."

Brillant reply.. LOL

"LOL"

Without going so far as to disagree with Viper, I will just say that I’ve had wood arrows which I knew (full well) were not entirely straight, but when it came down to my accuracy, I could never tell the difference.

And I’ve had a LOT of cases with aluminum where I didn’t realize that I had bent them until the next shot when the everything felt good but the arrows missed the mark by some horrifying margin.

And I should say that the woodies that flew well in spite of their imperfections were carrying a LOT of feather.

First I'm no expert but I "Think"

With a warp or slight bend in the wood it will still flex and has a chance to recover with appropriate rotation.

With a slight bend in the mid section of an aluminum arrow you will likely find the same chance to recover with appropriate rotation.

If the aluminum has more than a slight bend, a kink, I "think it will restrict the flex and therefore not recover.

If the wood has more than a slight bend, it is broken.

So if they are minor there should be little difference in how wood and aluminum that is spined the same act. they will work to some degree of accuracy.

If it is major, the aluminum will not work because it cannot flex. The wood will not work because it is broken.

To quote Viper "NO"

oz

I don't know of the forgiveness part because I haven't shot AL since the 70s.

Well, I shoot selfbows and make my arrows from white pine, wild rose and assorted shoots.

Wooden arrows just kind of go with wooden bows.

Jawge

Some of you that have said Viper is incorrect, have verified exactly what he is stating.

MP

Doesn't all arrows bend when the string is loosed?

My "experiences" based thoughts...

1. I think the #1 reason wood arrows have such a bad rapport with so many archers is because so much substandard shafting and so many poorly made wood arrows exist that an archer could buy several dozen wood arrows from various sources then cull out 40% from each dozen purchased and still walk away with a bad experience.

2. I need to shorten a wood shaft about an inch before seeing any serious changes in dynamic tune where the same amount of change could be seen in aluminum by shortening the shaft only about 1/2" or in CF shafting by shortening it a mere 1/4".

Based on the above?...wood should be more forgiving of minor differences in the shafts OAL which may translate into a bit more forgiveness where minor differences in DL are concerned.

3. I've seen "Wobble" in aluminum and cf arrows but can't recall seeing much wobble out of wood arrows...even the slightly warped ones.

4. I've yet to hear what I would call..."A Loud Wood Arrow"

(even when poorly tuned/matched)

5. No other shafting material can give you spine value options as incrementally defined as wood shafting spined in #'s.

Thor, in the sense between alum and wood-- ive found a small bend in alum to impact accuracy, while a bend in a wood arrow may very well have much less of an effect. Ive found i bend and trash aluminums much more often than i trash a wood arrow. I am much better at straightening woods. So yes i find wood more forgiving. And i am not one to accept a lower degree of precision nor do i believe anyone shooting wood would need to accept a lower degree of precision.

Wood is warped aluminium is bent----They both have a spine they will both flex. If either is bent/warped too bad to flex it ain't going where it is pointed. Both can be straightened if not Kinked/broke. What is the difference? >>>----> Ken

In forty plus years I've found that any shaft material will give you accuracy if tuned right...I've been shooting carbons some and even carbon will do the job.

But, I do think a good quality tapered wood shaft is very forgiving to any mistakes on the archers part. To clarify I am talking about goid quality, matched wiid shafts. I don't have any scientific proof but it's what I have observed.

When you have a woodies that flys really well they get broad heads. LOL

Also don't blame anything on your arrow especially when its your form and your side ways eyeball.LOL

Remember game getters? You could look at them and they bend I always thought.LOL

Now they were soft.

My experience has been that given the same amount of "warp" or "bend" that either material will shoot with the same degree of inaccuracy.

Now that level may be fine (and probably is) for lots of situations, but not all of them.

Wood takes time paitents and a love for the flight of something you created The simplicity of something grown for years in a tree,feathers hatched and grown on a living breathing bird,,,all brought together in a simple elegant stick made by an archer to break the wind in balanced form ultimately to find its target

For 10,000's of 1,000's of years almost every culture rich,poor,monarch surf,without sharing secrets and thoughts found and prefected the arrow

How can you not shoot wood arrows?

I've shot wood shafts for 50 years and for a period of time shot a fita style recurve competively with aluminum arrows. For me, a well matched set of wood shafts will shoot competively with aluminum or carbon. In my mind longbows deserve wood arrows.

I dunno. I do know that I can hit what I'm shooting at with a less than straight wood arrow. I don't shoot aluminum so I don't know if I might also be able to hit what I'm shooting at with a less than straight aluminum shaft.

Hey there Dean , a bent arrow is a bent arrow and you may think what you want , but in my minds eye you are wrong. I only shot straight arrows, weather they are aluminum or wood.

I don't think it is a matter of accepting less precision with wood. It is just a matter of enjoying wooden arrows and doing what we enjoy. Jawge

I Know I'm just having fun. I can get a wood arrow straight if it gets bent, but when an aluminum gets a kink, it is a tomato stake.

Mountain Man- 1

Viper- 0

grizz out

Guys -

There are a couple of pretty common misconceptions going on here.

First, distance matters. In the 20 yard and under world, 99% of the things we discuss here just don't matter. We've all seen multiple examples of that.

Second, "straightness" is a distant third when it comes the features of an arrow that really matter - again at distance. Spine consistency is first, and a close second is weight. Both of which are usually lacking in wood, unless you have a lot of time and/or money. Straightness isn't in the same ball park.

dean - OK, I'll bite.

"I Know I'm just having fun. I can get a wood arrow straight if it gets bent, but when an aluminum gets a kink, it is a tomato stake."

That's only partly true, because you left out the converse. I can straighten a bend in an aluminum arrow to tighter tolerances than you can straighten a wooden arrow, AND (more importantly to my mind) it will stay straight until (if) I do more damage to it. Sure, a kink in an aluminum arrow does render it useless, but would you shoot a wooden arrow with a gash in it?

Viper out.

Thanks guys for all the replies.They are all well thought out and have much merit.I do how ever like the way JINKSTER laid it out and really agree with his exsplination

It matters not what you loose from your bow!!

Straight,bent,short,long,,,,,,for me,,,,aluminum and carbon have no soul

But that doesnt mean there right wrong or indifferent,,to each there own Run what ya brung,,,,just loose arrows for the fun,the enjoyment,for the lust or for the love Just loose them!

I will say,,,,; ),,,,,,,each arrow finds its own paradox So every arrow is made to bend Everytime you release the string the arrow immediately starts bending and keeps bending,(flexing) in flight,in a certain amount till it stops forward momentum Finding the proper amount of flex,bend,paradox,etc is the goal of every archer Sooooo,,,,an arrow bending is one of the biggest parts of this search for arrow flight perfection nomatter the material use in arrow making Arrows dont fly straight whether its in shaft flex or trajectory Bent arrows might need attention or tuning,,,,,but a bent arrow is what we try to achieve in the long run In my opinion what were looking for is making an arrow bend to our will at the proper time and place

Pearl Drums nailed it when he said point and nock have to be in line and the nock has to be aligned with the shaft.

Usually if you bend an alum arrow there's a bend and nock and point are misaligned.

I recently made a shoot arrow out of Autumn Olive. Terrible stuff, with several squiggly bends, but when I put it in the crester, the point and nock spun in line with each other, and that arrow flies fine.

What are you trying to shoot? Dimes or deer? How much perfection do you demand? An aluminum arrow, being hollow, will dent and kink. A wood shaft will not do that but it can warp which is a curve in the shaft. It's a simple matter to work out the bend with your hands. You can do it walking to the next target. I have shot bent aluminum which I took the time to straighten and I have shot slightly warped wood arrows. Both would shoot well enough to take a deer with but you are not busting aspirins with them. Wood arrows are forgiving up to a point, but like anything else, past that point and performance suffers. Where that point is is up to your arrows and how well YOU ACTUALLY shoot a bow.

When I am shooting coins tossed across my targets, that is the tosser, (behind the deflector) is off to the side about eight feet from the center of the target stack and give a toss tha lands past the target. The goal is to get the coin so it is not above my target, 6' high. I hit more often with my wood arrows than the aluminum, probably due to the recovery difference, don't know don't care, just is.. What really irritates me about aluminum arrows, when I am out hunting bunnies in the cold, I put my finger on the arrow. Even with alight glove on that metal arrow freezes my finger. A wood arrow is much warmer hang the finger on. One more, when hunting deer late in the season and i am not moving, just sitting there doing nothing, my nose sometimes like to drip. I am allergic to lots of things. When my nostril drippings hit my aluminum arrow they freeze to to it. Now who would ever shoot a deer with an arrow covered with frozen snot drops? i know, I have nearly 200 1918s, with a bunch of 1818s and 1920s on the side, I am so upset that I will never shoran aluminum tomato stake again. My back yard is going to be covered with tomatoes, NO SHOOTING IN MY TOMATO PATCH. Viper is still wrong.

Heck no, Jawge has the best explanation. it is what we enjoy shooting and how we enjoy it, no matter. Viper is a very knowledgeable gent and like seeing his posts.Some of us are still in the stone age and like it that way, lol

Here is the deal;

I have bounced woods off trees while overshooting a target and picked up arrow and it had some big bends. Gave it the eye ball straightened back up quickly and shot another target and it was ok. Checked for cracks of coarse and good to go. Can't do that with an aluminum they bend and need to get straightened better than that to fly right again. A carbon might even break apart.

Woodies are the way to go i feel but they are getting more expensive also all the time and if you have a purty one your heart is going to break when and arrow breaks might as well shoot me in heart when that happens to me. LOL

Brother Ryman! Good day to you.

Part of it on wood is which way it is bent and which end. You want the straightest end on the nock end so there is a even direct forward push with the string. If the bend is on the nock end you won't have that, it will act squirrely right off the bat. If the bend is side to side once nocked you will have less trouble, than if bend is up and down with the nock on, which will cause it to constantly porpoise. DANNY

An aluminum arrow has a bend ina “place” while wood has warp that extends some distance in the shaft. Just throwing that out to add an element to the discussion. It may make a difference in how it flies. Seldom do you see a woodie with a kink, but you do in aluminum. All carbons are not created equal and some even have a stiff side due the manufacturing processes

Agreed Stik. I think that a wicked out release shows itself more in carbon and aluminum than wood quite often. Pheasant and bunny hunting is a sport where things happen fast and unexpected quite often. No release ever perfect, but in small game hunting nothing is ever perfect without a little bit little bit of luck when things need to happen fast. In my targets, nylon weave soy bean seed crates stuffed with silage plastic, I prefer aluminum arrows when the bag side is new. it is easier to get them out of the target and less arrow wear. When a side of the 4 by 4 crate target gets shot up and the fibers are relaxed I go to wood. My wood arrows are good, straight and they fly perfect and are every bit as accurate as aluminum even out to point on, which is from 54 to 62 yards with my bows. Back in the day for my target rigs, there were lots of different sizes, I could get the perfect spine and be dead on with various shaft sizes and still keep my clicker setting. In hunting arrows those days are gone. All of this nonsense with starting long and then trimming and changing point weights until something works, is a pain in the butt. With wood I can stick with my consistent bop and head weight and find the correct wood arrow for any of my bows and keep those parameters. I still have a clicker, the back of the head. When get an off length arrow, I catch myself still trying to tag the back of the head with my index finger. In that area, wood beats aluminum and carbon, unless there is a spine that matches a bow perfectly like the 1918s out of two of my go to bows.

dang voice typer anyways, never voice type with your mouthful, it's lunch time here.

PEARL DRUMS is 100% right, i learned this when first making bamboo arrows, they have quite a wooble at the nodes but as long as both ends are on the same axis they fly like darts

"I do believe that a lot of people who prefer wood arrow will accept a lower degree of precision." - Viper

A lot of people who vote will accept a lower degree of integrity also. That doesn't mean we should lower our standards.

When I started shooting again after a 40+ year hiatus, I was told by well meaning friends and experts that I had to shoot carbon to get the accuracy I wanted to achieve. But I feel as Mountain Man does and wanted to shoot wood. At first I had "good" wood arrows from a major supplier, that were spined in supposed 5# groups. The weight varied by over 100 grains. The arrows bent almost every time I shot them. I kept looking and found a fletcher who used vintage old growth high elevation POC shafts. All spined to the exact same # in a set, and matched in grain to within 5-10 grains per set. I have about 2 dozen of these sets and not one of these arrows has bent yet. Yes, they are relatively expensive but not nearly as expensive as the matched carbon arrows that Olympic shooters use.

So, not all of us have low expectations from wood. And none of us should. Just don't get crappy wood arrows.

In terms of accuracy, how's this? Shot today at 33 yards w/a 1962 35# Howatt Ventura. I've had a number of similar shots from other bows. Can aluminum or carbon beat that?

I use all sorts of them arrows for tomater stakes the tomatoes grow crooked usually anyways around cats bush.LOL

I love to start out plants with arrows that are broken or sideways makes me sorta feel at home being side ways.

Some times the stakes talk to me but can't blame on CBD oil yet wasn't on that last season. LOL

And yes I shoot wood arrows with gashs in them especially any custom arrows I hate to give one up. But when I do I reperpouse it.

Remember I have already had several lives cats do ya know that's not any fake news. I never had an arrow blow up while shooting that I recall. At least still here to talk about it.

Wood arrows can take a hit and keep on ticking but alums and carbons usually can't.

Upon shooting multiple arrows into tight spaces they are bound to get gashed unless your really are that bad of a shot.

I agree 20 and in mean very little but 30 plus is when you see the variances and even more so when you overload the front end.

You don't have to do that with woodies and if you had a prolonged woodie then call your archery dr.

I was just about to comment and saw Pearl Drums post. Exactly what I have found to be true. Line nock and point up and she will fly staight.

Kind of got off track here I think.

The question was are wood arrows more forgiving of slight bends than aluminum. And the answer is still know.

If you get the point and the nock are straightened to the same degree. they will have the same characteristics.

And yes, I use as many wood arrows as I do any other.

And yes, they are graded by spine, weight, and lastly straightness.

Pearl Drums nailed it. Just like a snakey self bow the end have to be in alignment.

A bent aluminum is hell on the riser pass , a wood arrow will always give on the riser pass, warped or not.. And the paradox on a wood arrow is even through out its length, a bent aluminum arrow doesn't whip right as the bend is extremely stiff, wacky flight.

Back in the day one could kill deer with an Acme cedar arrow with nothing more than a Zwicky Eskimo. Those days are gone forever, but don't tell my wife, she shoots a deer almost every year with just that.

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