Building a $9 Arrow That Competes With $90 Arrows

I'm going to show you how to build a $9 arrow that shoots just as well as a $90 arrow Building an entry-level arrow to shoot as well as a high-end performing target arrow It is not as easy as you might think It is a tedious process it takes some time but it will be well worth your money Before even going through the process of selecting an arrow you need to know what bow you're going to use I'm going to use the Voigt RX9 Ultra from the factory which has an ATA rating of 336 feet per second I'm going to shoot this bow at 70 pounds a 29-inch draw and I'm going to select my arrows based on the specifications My arrow that I'm going to show you to build today is going to be from Easton Easton has a wide variety of arrows on the market and one of their most entry-level Affordable arrows are the Easton 6.5 Bow Hunter shafts and arrows With a bow specification of 70 pounds and 29 inches I can use either a 340 spine arrow or a 300 spine arrow I've chosen a 300 spine because I'm going to add more weight in the front of the specific arrow which is going to weaken the spine which will give me the optimum spine and paper tuning accuracy for my bow But if you're not going to put in a 50-grain brass in the front I'd advise using a 340 spine with a 100-grain tip in front Obviously if you make your arrow short for a 27-inch archer or even a 28-inch archer and You're going to shorten your arrow so use the 340 spine instead of the 300 spine I'm going to cut my arrow at 29 inches with a 50-grain brass insert and a 100-grain tip In the front and the total arrow weight will be just over 450 grains The pro shops are going to hate me for showing this but the first thing you're going to All you have to do is grab a handful of these shafts for the selection process This is a numbers game and we're getting the quality out of the quantity To get the best shafts out of it this is roughly about two dozen shafts and we're going to get the best shafts from this To start eliminating the bad ones we're going to put the arrows on an arrow spinner and we're going to see which of these spin the best I'm going to get about 12 that I think will spin well and if I don't get 12 I'm going To start digging into the bunch there to make sure I get 12 and then I'm going to go into step two First we're going to spin these and check if the nock is straight and if the front section spins straight From these you start selecting the best ones Out of the 25 I have 12 arrows that spin well and these arrows are straight olerance of 0.005 and within this there are some gems and I've got 12 of them right here Here but this isn't where it stops I need it to be perfect The next step will be I'm going to weigh these and I'm going to get the six shafts That weigh exactly the same The reason I weigh them before I cut them is to make sure they weigh exactly The same even before we start the cutting process and once we start cutting the arrows that'll make it even more accurate from a tolerance level and straightness level From a weight perspective before we even start adding the components to the actual arrow build I'm going to remove this nock in the weighing of the shaft process because the nock in itself They might have some inconsistencies so I'm removing all the nocks and we will not be using these nocks in the arrow build This all seems tedious but this is the whole point of it We are only going to weigh the shafts at the moment but I am going to weigh the nocks To show you the actual weight difference in some of these components And what I've seen by weighing these nocks is almost a half a grain difference between e nocks I've just taken out and with the other components added to it if you loo At the weight of the brass insert if you look at the weight of the fletches and the nock and the other components it might give you a three to five grain difference after The arrow has been built The whole idea is to build six arrows that weigh exactly the same and we go through this process It does take a little bit of time but like I said it will be well worth your time It's actually nice to see that of the 12 shafts I've weighed 11 are exactly the same At 304 grains at full length and one was weighing at 306 a two-grain difference And it's nice to see that it's actually nice and consistent for the price range of arrows I'm building today From the 11 that I know weigh exactly the same and spin well I am still going to spin them I'm going to choose my sixth favorite to build I can say from the 11 that I've had eight really spin well and I'm going to remove three that I'm not happy with Eight really spun well they weigh the same I'm selecting six And now I'm going to go through the process of elimination with the components I'm going to choose There are at least six variables that come into play when building an accurate arrow And before I even start assembling the arrow I'm going to weigh each and every component and make sure that they are consistent and they can all add to the accuracy of the specific arrow that I'm building The numbers I'm tracking are the shaft weight the insert weight the point weight the knock weight the fletches and I'm adding a unibushing The unibushing makes a huge difference in the actual accuracy of this arrow for me So this is a nice upgrade I'm doing to an inexpensive arrow to make it nice and durable and very consistent and accurate The shaft weight we've measured that at being at 304 grains so I'm going to put here 304 I am going to cut the shafts at 29 inches and I' m going to weigh them again just for good measure These are all 304 The first component I'm weighing is a 50-grain brass insert I don't need this insert to be 50 grains I need six inserts that all weigh exactly the same I'm expecting a little bit of variation but I just need six that weigh exactly the same Most of the inserts I have weighed were between 49 and 49 5 grains in weight and I've seen a consistent number of them being 49.5 grains but the lowest that I've tested is 47.5 grains It was 47 grains which is a 2.5 grain difference but I'm going with 49.5 grains They were the most consistent so I'm going to put that down here and I've selected them and I've put them one side 49.5 grains The next component on the list is field points I'm going to use a 100 grain field point and like I said before I just need consistency So anything that's close to 100 grains that 's exactly the same that's what I'm going to use I can already see a three grain difference between the different field points I'm getting good consistency with 100.6 grains That is what I'm going to set aside and that's what I'm going to use What is important and something you need to keep in mind is when I'm placing these field points on my actual arrow I'm also going to spin this and these six tha I've selected one that may not spin as well as the others so make sure you have some extras to replace it if this one doesn't spin well The weight I'm going for is 100.6 I've got a few different ones there I don't know if they'll be straight so I've selected more but it's 100.6 grains Field point that I'm just going to write down here The next component I am going to weigh is the nock I am using an Eastern G nock and I'm just taking it out of the package here and exactly e same as the field points Some of these nocks might fit a bit tightly in the unibushing and it might Not as well and I think it starts from the nock and it's very important to make sure that this is very straight when you spin the arrow So I'm going to weigh them I'm going to weigh a few I'm going to try and get 10 that weigh the same and those are the nocks I'm going to put on the arrow If something doesn't spin well I'm going to remove it and just put in another nock Not much variation here pretty consistent but because we pick here a 0.1 or 0.2 it's not what we're looking for We want to make sure that it is exactly 0.1 on the money The majority of the nocks were 6.6 grains The heaviest one was 6.9 I've got a bunch of them that are 6.6 that I can keep and use for the bow belt for the arrow belt The unibushing is the component into which the nocks fit and the weig The amount of the unibushing itself that I've done the same process for is 12.1 grains I've got 6 here that works well and I'm just going to add that here 12.1 grains A unibushing makes a massive difference in accuracy and improving your accuracy and also in durability If you do hit your arrow from behind that unibushing protects your arrow from being damaged damaged and if the unibushing actually gets damaged you just take it out and add a new one and you are just adding longevity to the arrows that you are spending so much o Time in building and getting accurate I've chosen to use the Alpha vane from Boning This is the AR-1250 material It's very durable It's accurate I'm also using the similar material on my target arrows and it seems to be working well There's no specific reason I just like it I'm just going to test it and see how it works Just going to weigh a couple to see that I get consistency out of this and make sure that I do not mess this up It's worth checking the fletches There are some inconsistencies We are going to work on a 0.1 scale here You also need to make sure your scale is consistent I always keep resetting the scale just making sure that I'm getting the right reading And it doesn't get stuck on the same reading all the time But because we've got six arrows that we're building we're putting three fletches on Each of the arrows we need to make sure we've got 18 fletches that weigh the same So it does take a little bit of time but well worth it The consistent number we got on the fletches was 8.4 grains per fletch We've got a couple there to build the arrows We are just writing that down here to make sure we keep track of it all And now we are ready to start the actual build of the arrow I have all my components here They all weigh exactly the same I've got six uncut shafts here that weigh exactly the same But before I cut them I need to install the unibushing and the nock and then I'll cut the arrow This spins really well The nock that I've got in there is spinning nicely I am using the nock tool from Easton to actually put that in so I know it's no Being bent or damaged or anything like that I am going to cut this arrow at 29 inches I like cutting my arrows at the length I'm shooting my bow at my draw length This means that the actual end of the shaft is going to stick out slightly in front of My bow and that is where my broadhead is going to be For me it's nice having the broadhead in front of my hand and not falling back I don't want the arrow to fall out of the rest for some reason when I draw the bow and so on and it's easy for me to let down And the 29 inches will work really well with the spine on my bow 29 inches that's exactly right And I just want to make sure it's nice and flush That's 29 inches Arrow spins really well I'm just squaring this out to make it easy and quick if you want to go through the process of using a nice squaring tool please do so I'm just making sure this is nice and level and straight My arrow cutter does cut this nice and straight This is nice and flush Now it's time to glue in the insert I'm just cleaning out the excess carbon inside here I'm using methylated spirits and I'm just cleaning the inside out making sure that it's nice and dry I prefer using super glue when gluing in the insert The reason I 'm using super glue is that I don't want this to come out at all I do not want to rotate my insert or anything like that I'm going to just glue it in with super glue and that's going to stay in there forever If you do want to use hot melt if you do want to align the inserts when you are using Different broadheads and so on you might want to heat this up then you can rotate the insert itself and then it can align with the fletches I don't like using hot melt on carbon shelves like this I just sometimes lose the inserts They just pull out the target so I just want them to get in and get stuck in there and just stay there I'm adding the 100 grain field point I am going to put this on a spin tester immediately to see whether this field point is nice and straight I've screwed in a random field point just to check if it's nice and straight This one's okay but it's not what I want so I'm going to replace this one with another field point and this one is definitely better Now I just need to add the fletches and then we'll be ready to build the next few arrows The advice I want to give you if you want things to be consistent is to use the same fletching jig If you make a lot of arrows it might take a little time but the purpose is to create a strong and accurate weapon It's to get six arrows that have the same fletch configuration out of the same fletching jig that weighs the same and this is the way you have to do it I've got methylated spirits and I'm cleaning all the excess dust off the back of the shaft itself I want to make sure there's no residue or dust here so that when I put the actual fletch on it doesn't come loose for any reason The boning vanes are pre-primed and easy to stick they are one of the best sticking vanes in the industry in my opinion I'm using it on my target arrows too and it's quick you just have to leave it there for a few seconds I am using Q-Bond super glue for this I'm not putting on too much super glue I don't want it to get all gluey and wet and runny All the excess glue I just wipe off quickly and once I'm done putting these fletches Okay I just put a little dab on the front of each of the fletches just making sure they're going to be nice and secure But we are done building the actual arrow itself It's a small dab of glue there One arrow down five to go Six arrows done and dusted I've got them from number one to number six The nocks spin well the points spin well I have not weighed them on a grain scale yet but I want to see if they all weigh the same And there you have it 467.5 six arrows that weigh exactly the same The arrows spin well the nocks and the points are straight So these arrows are really inexpensive arrows that we've made to look and feel like expensive ones Comment below if you want to see me put the inexpensive arrows up against the expensive ones The most expensive target arrows Eastern has to offer Please like and subscribe I'll catch you on the next one