Making split hickory ramrods?

[Skychief]

Can anyone give or lead me to a tutorial about making split hickory loading rods?   I want to learn how from the tree to the finished product.

Thanks for any help.

Skychief.

[Jerry V Lape]

The general idea is you use a  hickory log long enough to get the length required.  Split the hickory log into rails as in making rails for a fence.  Then pick a section which appears to have grain straight enough w/o irregularities caused by branches.  Continue to split the wood to smaller diameter pieces until you are approaching rod diameter.  Then you can scrape, spokeshave further. Then buy or make a tool (I think Acer makes them) that has three progressively smaller sharpened U shaped notches that you can pull the wood over to finished diameter.  You will also most likely need to have a heat gun to straighten it because if you split it following the grain the rod will not be perfectly straight.  I think you will find it easier to split the wood while it is still green or undried. 

Having said all this I will confess  that I have only made one such rod and it took me a quarter secton of a log to accomplish it because the balance of the wood had a branch coming through it. It is a tough rod though with no grain run out .   

[Old Ford2]

I have had good luck, in buying some straight grain hickory ( I pick it out ) at the local wood vendor.
Usually they have it in 1" X 4" X 48" size. After I cut it on the table saw to close to finished size.
Next step, I round the corners, with a small hand plane.
After I am somewhat close to being round, I drag the ramrod through a "U"  shaped scraper to the finished size ( sometimes tapered as required )
Lastly I sand the ramrod with finer and finer grades of sand paper.
Then you are ready to stain and finish as required.
Very easy to do, and inexpensive as well.
Caution though, many wood vendor sales people have no idea between hicory and ebony. So know your wood before you start.

Old Ford

[Skychief]

Thanks guys.  Can you elaborate more on staining and finishing?

[Dr. Tim-Boone]

I have one rod I made from a six foot hickory sapling that was about 5/8 tallered up to 1/4" . Cut it, hung it to dry and then rolled and steame it and finally planed it to final shape....tough!!
For others I sand to 400, stain with the color of the gun and then apply a sealer coat of medioum oil varnish and finally coat liberally with Renaissance wax. Bees wak would probably be good too.

[Skychief]

This evening i cut a hickory that was topped out by a storm recently.

I cut a 50" log off of the butt and split four staves from 1/2 of the log.   So, I have four 1/8th staves.

I ran into problems when trying to further reduce the staves between the growth rings.   My wedges produced a lot of runout when trying to split this way (between the annular rings).   Any advice?   Maybe I need to split the stave into smaller dimensions first.   The width of the staves is ~4-6 inches.

Also, do I want to use the darker heartwood or the lighter sapwood for ramrods?

I placed the staves in my garage for the time being.   Should I paint the ends with something?   Maybe not because ramrods are so small in diameter anyway.

Any and all advice apperciated!


I would love to have another go at these staves even tonight.   Just not certain how to split between the rings.

Thanks, Skychef.

[woodsrunner]

I'm not qualified to tell you how to rive out a ramrod because I have never done this. But, as someone who grew up splitting firewood to heat with I can tell you with total accuracy to always split ring poruous woods such as hickory, oak, ash and others the same direction the tree grew. In other words if you quartered a hickory log always split it cutting from the stump side toward the top of the tree side. Less work involved if you split this way

[Skychief]

This evening i cut a hickory that was topped out by a storm recently.

I cut a 50" log off of the butt and split four staves from 1/2 of the log.   So, I have four 1/8th staves.

I ran into problems when trying to further reduce the staves between the growth rings.   My wedges produced a lot of runout when trying to split this way (between the annular rings).   Any advice?   Maybe I need to split the stave into smaller dimensions first.   The width of the staves is ~4-6 inches.

Also, do I want to use the darker heartwood or the lighter sapwood for ramrods?

I placed the staves in my garage for the time being.   Should I paint the ends with something?   Maybe not because ramrods are so small in diameter anyway.

Any and all advice apperciated!


I would love to have another go at these staves even tonight.   Just not certain how to split between the rings.

Thanks, Skychef.

Anybody here that can answer the above?   Much appreciate any advice!

Thanks, Skychief.

[northmn]

Arrow makers and the old timers had a tool called a froe. It had a loop for a handle in it like a tommahawk but was a heavy blade that could be driven with a mallet trough thinner sections of wood.  They would split out 1/2 inch squares then spokeshave down to the desired diameter.  Saying this, when I have tried doing some of this, trees and grain may taper such that over 4 feet you may get a little less than  1/2 inch at one end.  Smaller trees and sapling sowrk well for this type of activity, but need to be pretty straight.  Usually you find them in the woods growing up to compete with other trees.  One problem of doing things today is that we do not have all the tools granddad had.  I think the froe was sharpened or beveled on one side

DP

[flintriflesmith]

A froe is deliberately dull. That is so it will not slice through the wood across the grain. It is driven into the end grain only a couple of inches then the handle is used as a lever to "run" the split down the wood.

Several wood tool dealers sell froes (also called frows) so Google up a picture or two.

There's an old mountain expression "dull as a froe" used to refer to someone not very bright. I guess the modern equivalent is to say "He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer."

Gary

[RonT]

I may have posted this before but here it is again...   I start with splits and work them down with the plane shown in the pic.  The set, plane and sanding block, were bought at a Trad.  archery event and are for arrow making.
Once I get the split down to ~round, a scribe pencil lines around the shaft every ~3", and then remove them with the thumb plane.
All of my rods have a "swell" and thong hole on one end.
I make my own Brass ends out of .30 cal., .38/357/.357 Max., 9mm, 9mm Largo cases, drilling through the primer pocket and running 10-32 threads.  I then pin them and have had no pull outs yet.
R

[J.D.]

An acquaintance, who made his own arrow shafts, used a 1/4" thick steel plate with a countersunk hole to round the splits he made.

The countersink came to a sharp edge on the bottom side of the hole that became the cutting edge for his "doweling plate".

The ends of the somewhat square split were rounded and the bottom end slightly tapered to enter the doweling hole. The other end of the split was chucked in a hand held electric drill, and the split drilled into the hole.

The surface of the resulting dowel was somewhat rough, but further reduction by scraping in  sharpened U shaped notches in the side of the doweling plate smoothed and tapered the shafting.

This set up worked pretty well, but IMHO, took too much time in making arrow shafts that were lost in a few weeks to a few months. IMHO, Using the doweling plate to make ramrods might be another matter.

Though I haven't done this type of splitting, I seem to remember reading that when the split begins to run off, pulling on either the split or the main billet would bring it back to running true.

You might search one of the basket weaving sites to see how they deal with splitting  billets, or maybe search for something akin to riving shingles for more information on techniques for splitting larger billets to small splits.

God bless

[Luke MacGillie]

I may have posted this before but here it is again...   I start with splits and work them down with the plane shown in the pic.  The set, plane and sanding block, were bought at a Trad.  archery event and are for arrow making.
Once I get the split down to ~round, a scribe pencil lines around the shaft every ~3", and then remove them with the thumb plane.
All of my rods have a "swell" and thong hole on one end.
I make my own Brass ends out of .30 cal., .38/357/.357 Max., 9mm, 9mm Largo cases, drilling through the primer pocket and running 10-32 threads.  I then pin them and have had no pull outs yet.
R

I like, and I want one.....

[Tim Crosby]

Back when I made them I would find the straightest smoothest Hickory I could find, no knots, maybe at least 6” in dia but not much more. Cut it way longer than necessary, split it in qtrs. Then using a froe split them down to about quarter to half dollar size. Take those pieces and  put them up against a rafter, hammer four or five nails in next to it, then bend the nail over it to hold it in place, all the while trying to keep it as straight as possible.  After a year or so, take a piece of wood, longer than the Hickory, with a V groove cut in it , lay the Hickory in the groove. clamp one end down and shape down with a spoke shave turning it as you go. Final shaping can be done with a scraper, one like Acer makes would be a great time save and sand paper.  
 I wouldn’t use a saw to cut it with because you are cutting across grain, splitting will help keep the grain in line.

MY2CW,  Tim C.

PS: I learned the hard way, sprinkle a little 7dust on them to keep the bugs out.TC