It is a pleasant hobby to make your own arrows, but it is annoying when you shoot them and find that the piles (points) come off when you pull the arrows out of the target. Here are a few tips to stop it happening.

Clean the inside of the pile before glueing. Use white spirit or thinners to get any oil out, and wipe the inside with soft paper to get them dry.

Make sure that the pile is a fairly tight fit to start with. If the pile is a parallel fit and will not go on because the hole is too small, then roll a piece of wood over the end to crush it, but not too much. Araldite is better than hot-melt wax for glueing. Put the mixed Araldite inside the pile but on one side only, so that any trapped air can get out. Once the pile is on you can twist it to spread the glue. If you accidentally trap any air so that the pile comes off as fast as you push it on, gouge a groove down the part of the shaft that goes in the pile so that the air can escape as you push the pile on again.

If your arrow sticks in a tree or any hard substance, don't pull on the arrow, which will make the pile come off. Concentrate on getting the pile out, by digging into the wood with a knife, and don't put any pressure on the arrow. Pretend the arrow isn't there, just work on the pile.

Finally, and this is probably the most important of all, which is why I have left it until the last and it might just stick in your memory, DON'T twist the arrows when you pull them out of the target. Wood is slightly flexible, but the metal pile is not, so there will be shear force where the two join if you twist, and eventually the pile will snap off. There is no point in twisting anyway, because there is no thread on an arrow to be unscrewed, it is just that modern man has been brought up on the idea of screw-threads on rods.