About Us    

     A little about myself. I owned a small sawmill and cut Sitka Spruce exclusively for over 20 years. I milled stock for everything from model airplane wing spars, sailboat masts and spars, kayak paddle laminates, canoe gunnels & thwarts, arrow stock, and guitar and piano sound board. The mill closed in 1995 due to environmental protection of old growth timber. (spotted owl) Some milling is still going on, but now my wood comes mainly from Alaska or British Columbia.

Spruce is becoming increasingly expensive and hard to get, but I believe that with my 25 years in the spruce business and 37years in the wood business, that I will be able to supply shafts for some years before wood supply becomes a problem.
 
Between the mill and the archery business I worked building canoes, canoe laminate paddles, working in joinery for yacht interiors for four years and developing my shafting machines. For the last 4 years I have been exclusively making arrow shafts.
 
My machines are relatively fast. I have a power fed gang rip that cuts 100 linear feet a minute or the equivalent of 30 blanks. I have a router based dowler that cuts with the grain, (a necessity with spruce) and runs 60 feet a minute or about 1 shaft every 3 seconds. Our sander is a custom built machine that rolls the shafts across a sanding belt, it was built by Rich Dyckhoff of Anderson machine in Seattle WA.

    And we have a laser line rip saw to get the edge of the board absolutely parallel to the grain before the board is cut, leaving all the shafts with the grain running as true to the shaft as possible.
 

-Neil Hildebrand

                                 Robert
 
This is our grandson Robert,

who has been a helper in our shop

since age 4. Good machine operator

 with a lot of wood knowledge for his years.

Roxane
 
Owner of Hildebrand Arrow Shafts

This is Roxane, 20 years in spruce

grade and tallies, 4 years arrow grade

and spine. attention to detail is her strong trait
 

Jim
 
With 50 years woodsman, woodworker,

and 15 years yew wood bowyer, he brings us a lot of

traditional archery history and expertise

along with a lifetime of wood knowledge.

Neil
 
Neil is the gear head, building or maintaining

our machines, 37 years in the wood business,

and Sitka spruce specialist since 1976.