I understand more permanently housed peoples got their arrows from a fletcher who had a turning machine that could be used to more or less uniformly work wood, but how about those who were often on the move?
As a side question, what about bandits and other people who didn't have access to professional fletchers? Where did they get their arrows from?
Machining timber into cylinders is a great way to make arrows if you're working on a large scale. But a simpler and superior way to make arrows is to use wooden shoots.
If you cut a tree down to a stump, the tree will start to grow shoots. After trimming off the bark and straightening the shoot, you end up with a stick with circular grain with no particular weakness in any direction.
Machined shafts have a flat grain running through them, ideally you'd have the grain running straight throughout the length but usually it ends up running off somewhere and forming a weak spot.
All you need to make a shaft from a shoot is a knife, some heat and time. Native Americans used dogwood or viburnum shoots, Mongols used birch shoots and later once established in China, started using bamboo which is even easier to turn into arrow shafts.
Edit: Here's a picture of some dogwood shoots someone harvested, note how straight and arrow-like they already are.
You can straighten a stick by heating it over a fire untill hot and carefully bending it into shape untill cool. Its a method many native americans used atleast
