Belegarth

The last post involving golf tube arrows was a half year ago, and I was wondering if anything changed in the belegarth community involving the use of them. I've heard all kinds of things about the durability and safety of them.

Last that I've seen on the golf tube arrows, they were not really popular, and not very well known.

Does anyone have any experience with the golf tube arrows, and can say whether a newbie to archery should or shouldnt experiment with making them? How do they compare in actual use in a battle, vs the traditional arrow?

I've had a chance to use them and, like regular arrows, they have their strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths:

1) Can be cheaper than regular arrows since golf tubes only cost around $2 a piece.

2) Safety. They can be made so they're much safer on the nock end. The golf tube arrows I saw had a plastic film canister trimmed down and padded for the nock. I feel it's much safer than a conventional nock. The arrowhead will generally be safer since you're building it on a wider base.

3) The tubes seem to be a little more resilient and not as brittle as arrow shafts. A golf tube isn't going to split in two when it accidentally gets swatted by a sword (true story, BTW).

4) If you get used to shooting them and no one else is, other archers will probably not be as accurate if they reuse your arrows.

Weaknesses:

1) The flight characteristics are a bit wonky. While users of them claim they fly just as well as regular arrows, I'm not entirely convinced.

2) It'll take some time to adjust to shooting them especially if you've been shooting regular arrows.

3) You can't carry as many arrows since they take up a lot more space in a quiver.

As far as whether you should consider building them as a new archer, that's a tough one and really dependent on the resources you have available. Forged Foam arrows are probably one of the most common arrow builds out there and there are plenty of archers who could probably help you build them as well as a couple of good tutorials on the web. Cost-wise, I think the golf tubes are probably cheaper but in terms of flight characteristics, I really prefer regular arrows. I've found they tend to fly straighter and have a longer maximum effective range than golf tube arrows. YMMV.