Building a quiver

Consider this a diary for now. I am building myself a new quiver and am trying to make it as perfect as possible.

I am already taking pictures of every building step. When it is finished I will clear up this guide.

Tools/Materials

scissors

a sharp knife

2-component glue

wood glue

rice paper

cork sheet

carton sheet

wallpaper paste

Tonoko

Preparations

There are two decisions you should make first and they are closely connected:

• Which dimensions should the quiver have (especially considering the diameter)
• What material should it be made of

I prefer carton tubes over plastic tubes - just because they are easier to handle. However, I was never able to find a carton tube with 4cm diameter. 5cm was the smallest I found and those were only 30cm long. I tried to glue them together but was neither straight nor robust.

Why am I fixed on 4cm diameter tubes? Because the traditional dimensions are 4cm diameter for rhe lower part and 6cm for the upper part. Such a quiver can hold about 10 arrows. If you check the pictures of the quiver I already made, you probably agree that the last just looks best. The others are a bit plump. Their dimensions are 6cm for the lower part, 7.5cm for the upper part.

So, the probably first question you should answer yourself is: What exactly is the purpose of the quiver?

• Do I want to carry my arrows to a training and back - in this case the 4cm/6cm version would suit you
• Do I want to carry many arrows around (for the group, just because I have so many, etc) - in that case you should choose bigger diameters. It is still on my schedule to find a good balance for bigger diameter. I am not convinced that 6cm/9cm would do the trick...

My current project is the traditional, elegent version. For this I bought a plastic tube at the do-it-youself store. Its intended use would be water pipes. The upper part, the 6cm carton tube you can find i.e. in the post office or stores close to universities (used for transporting architecture plans etc).

For the upper part, you will need a tube of 35cm length. For the lower part, aim for a 1m tube (just to be on the save side).

The next thing to decide is how you plan to do the diminution between the bigger and the smaller tube. Genereally, there are two options (check pictures):

cut out triangles of the bigger tube and bend it together This is recommended by japanese guides. However, it has 2 disadvantages: You have to make complex calculations of how much you have to cut out No matter how much you grind, you will never get it round (circular) again
glue several tubes into each other You will have steps but these can easily be smoothed by griding The whole tube will stay circular This is the most delicate part of the whole quiver. This technique will make it very robust

Preparing the top part

Take your 6cm tube cut it into 2 parts:

• one with the lenght of 15cm
• one with the lenght of 16cm

I recommend to use a sharp knife instead of a saw for this task. The edges will be sharper that way.

Then take the 15cm part and split it into a part with 5cm length and one with 10cm length. Mark the 2 edges that fit into each other!

Below is a graphic of the 3 parts. On the right side you can see the raw top piece. The black part is the 16cm piece which serves as slide for the lid.

17th of June 2009

It took a while but now I made progress.

Preparing the base for lacquering

First, grind down the steps. It is tedious work but rewarding in the end
When you are satisfied with the conic form, cover the whole quiver with rice paper. This will give it a consistent surface.
Now we are getting to a more interesting part. If you want a really good base for lacquer, you will need Tonoko. My first mixture of Tonoko and wallpaper paste worked really well. I used about 250ml of thick wallpaper paste and 4 big spoons of Tonoko. Put on a thin layer. When it is dry, grind it with a fine grinding paper and re-apply another layer. It took 3 layers till I thought it would do fine as base.
It is time to start lacquering. I chose to use japanese urushi lacquer. Everything below will describe the progress. The composition of the lacquer should be precisely urushi:terpentine = 1:2. The first layer will not look very impressive. The best place to get this lacquer hard and dry is the shower room. Urushi needs humidity to dry...! As soon as the urushi is dry, grind it with a fine grinding paper and apply the next layer.
	While the urushi is drying, we can attend to the cover lid. Cut out a circular shape from the cork sheet that will fit into the tube. Also cut out a circular carton shape from the carton. Use 2-component superglue to fit those 3 pieces together
	I like it if the cover has a round top. I use bodyfiller (?) to create this. A sheet of thin plastic will help you to get a nice surface. Just pull the plastic down hard.