Middle Earth Ranger Forum

Those of you who craft your own arrows: do you stain or seal the wood? If so, do you use modern materials or traditional European ones?

Anyone got a favorite recipe?

For my ranging arrows I coat them with walnut dye and then treat them with linseed oil several times a year. Like most of my gear I mute any color that might draw the eye, this includes arrow shafts.

Arrow wood can be walnut dyed?! Most excellent!

Might I ask what technique you use? I assume you don't just soak the arrows in a dye-water bath.. or do you?

And raw or boiled linseed oil - or does it matter?

Thank you!

I wipe the shafts down with a clean cloth soaked in the dye prior to fletching.

I prefer boiled but I've also never tried raw so I can't speak as to the affects there.

Also the dye that I use on wood has been boiled down to a paint like thickness, seems to take better to wood that way. I'd like to experiment with homemade birch oil sometime as well.

If I am coloring it, I use aniline dyes..which kind of finish it as is...a dip in good polyurethane can really do that job.

However, for my own arrows, I use linseed oil or tung oil. A quirk of mine to use natural sealants...and I don't color my own arrow shafts so it harms decoration not at all.

FWIW

Eledhwen

Ursus wrote:I'd like to experiment with homemade birch oil sometime as well.

Birch oil is excellent stuff for so many things, wood rejuvenation among them. At the same time as it nourishes the wood it also darkens it considerably (as well as bringing out the character). Here's a comb I finished up today, before and after birch oiling.
[Shameless plug]: I never got around to posting a for-sale listing, but if anyone's interested in some to experiment with, I have some in 1 and 1/2 oz bottles. Just let me know!