Incidental Padding

For those of you who witnessed the Dagorhir debut of golf-tube arrows at Ragnarok XXI, many were curious as to how to construct these unusual-looking projectiles. Thanks to extensive play-testing out west, most notably in Aggelgorod, the design has been tweaked and the endurance of this new arrow format tested. Want to build some of your own? Read on!

1. Buy golf tubes; they cost around $1 at a sporting goods store. These tubes are used to keep the handles of golf clubs from tearing each other up in the golf bags. Usually, you'll find these in a plain white box, hidden in the corner; you may have to ask for them. Most golf tubes start out slightly curved; this is fine, because as long as curve is up or down, does not affect accuracy. This matters when you cut your nocks.
2. One end of the golf tube has a ring on it; this is the business end. Get some strapping tape, and tape a 1.5" washer onto the ring. This is very important, because it preserves the next layer of foam. (Note that no Aggelgorod golf tube arrow has ever had a shaft come through the foam, in over two years of heavy use.) Before the next step, you ought to scuff up the non-adhesive side of the strapping tape with some fine sandpaper.
3. Wrap two layers of camping pad foam around the end of the shaft and glue them on securely. Note that you'll have to trim a little, right around the washer. This foam must end up flush to the washer face.
4. Glue on two disks of camping pad foam over the washer. Obviously, these disks are as wide as the washer and the blue foam, which should be about three inches.
5. Add face foam; I've used dense open cell and compressed open cell. I'd say whatever works on standard arrows will work on these.
6. Cut to length. Important: the nock is an inch deep, so I don't cut the arrow to 28". I cut the arrow to 29" from the base of the head, and cut the nock 1" deep.
7. Cut the nock. First, make sure the arrow is "right side up"; that is, curved up or down. This is very important if you want arrow to fly straight. If you haven't handled golf tubes, this curve thing sounds bad, but to look at them, you'd think they were straight- it's a minor curve on most tubes. I was told that all golf tubes are curved to help keep the golf clubs in, but I recently spoke to a manufacturer, and he said they're made straight, but the soft plastic settles after the extrusion process. To cut the nocks, don't cut a "V" shape, cut an "almost V" where the cuts never meet. You'll be making two diagonal cuts, about three-quarters of an inch apart. (If you cut a "V", the bowstring will eventually cut into the arrow shaft.) Tuck the flaps into the inside of the shaft, and then round off any sharp corners left over from your cuts.
8. Throw on some flights/fletching. I've been using real flights, superglued on, but they don't last as long as I'd like. Some people are using duct tape flights, and I've heard of people using thin craft foam; as long as you've got flights, it's cool.
9. Cover the head, but never in yellow cloth. It's against the rules to cover a golf tube arrow with yellow cloth. They look too much like javelins, and have occasionally been thrown by accident.
10. How to fire: grab the arrow between two fingers, about 1" above the nock, and load. You must keep both fingers on the string when you pull back, squeeze the fingers slightly, to hold the arrow in place. Note that these arrows are significantly wider than regular arrows, so, on your bow-hand, depending on which side you load from, you'll either have to keep a finger or a thumb extended, as a shelf under the arrows. This quickly becomes second nature.

Advantages of golf tube arrows:

• Indestructibility: Bend them in half, no problem; just bend them back, then massage the kink out. At Ragnarok, I saw a golf tube arrow that had been stepped on so many times, it looked like a strip of black duct tape. A little squeezing and it popped right back. That arrow, like every single golf tube arrow in Aggelgorod, is still in service.
• Faster loading: One of my archer buddies remarked that it was like a machine gun; truth is, in a rush, these arrows load about twice as fast when you know what you're doing, because you're not struggling with the nock.
• Cheaper: Golf tube arrows cost around $2-3 each.
• Safer: Golf tube arrows are safer to hit with, safer when they bounce back, and they seem to be incapable of the really nasty shaft through the foam accidents that occasionally happen with "real" arrows.
• Not as scary to park rangers and law enforcement: Enough said.

Disadvantages of golf tube arrows:

• Need larger quivers: Not a deal-breaker, but it may take a little time to find/make a larger quiver.
• Takes some getting used to: They do fire a bit different; many archers at Ragnarok who've picked them up think they're not accurate, but it's a radically different feel. If you spend some time with them, they're just as accurate.
• Drops faster: Golf tube arrows drop faster due to their shape and weight, but you learn to arc up the arrow and they work fine. As you've seen in the video, ranges are the same.
• Ugly: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and we're used to these things out West, but some people prefer the appearance of old school arrows.

The Aggelgorod GT arrows were designed primarily for added safety. In my time in Dagorhir, I've seen my share of dangerous arrow failures, including shafts coming right through the foam. Archery is the most dangerous part of Dagorhir, and, while I'm not trying to outlaw the old style arrows, I do think we need an alternative.

Also, we have had problems with parks that hate archery. At some of the Los Angeles County parks, we avoided this issue by using bows made of PVC pipe. Not the best range, but it worked in small parks. Nowadays, when we're approached by park authorities, the first thing I do is pick up a GT arrow, and explain how safe we are.

I had been thinking about new kinds of shafts for a while. My idea was to find a shaft so safe, that if it was shot at someone, completely unpadded, it still wouldn't do much harm. I'm not the first to try this; the SCA has been using GT shafts for a while now. But nobody had tried this in Dagorhir.

I built the first twelve as an experiment, about two and a half years ago. We tested them, and we've never had a problem with them, other than tearing off the flights. The latest generation of Aggelgorodian golf tube arrows is being built lighter, with new foam technology, so we're expecting even better safety and greater ranges soon.