Besides checking the grain, you'll also need a spine tester to check for spine; and a scale to check weight. Jason Westbrock had an article in TBM about buying dowels by the 1,000's and being able to make cheap arrows for squirrel hunting, but it can be time consuming, you need the right equipment, and more than likely you will have a lot of culls.

I don't know of a cheap way to get good wood arrows--believe me, I've looked!

As far as worrying about messing up, as long as you follow a few basic rules your arrows will be shootable--may not look too great the first few times if you are trying your hand at capping and cresting (makes me shudder to think about what my first ones looked like), but neither the targets or critters will care about that.

Chad