I'm pretty new to primitive archery. When making your own arrows, what is considered a common variance in total arrow weight?

For woodshafts +-5 grains is very acceptable.

Frankly, it depends on what kind of distances you intend to shoot. If you don't intend to shoot much beyond 20-30 yards, I doubt you'd see much difference even with a 50 grain variance, unless you're capable of shooting pingpong ball size groups at 30 yards.

edit... I'd better point out that I agree with Bobco though. I'm not advocating using mismatched arrows.

Thanks, most of the arrows are +/- 10 grains. I'm not planning on shooting beyond 20 yds until I get a lot more confident in my instinct shooting.

I have never shot any animal beyond 25 yards, my spines run 5-10 gr and at those distances I may varied 2" on the target ,but no more than that.
So I go along with arthur P.

When I shot wood arrows,I wasn't very concerned with getting them within a certain grain range(although it was nice).I was more concerned that they all were in the same spine range(within 2lbs)for my bows

Kosherboy, weight is measured in grains. The spines are either measured in deflection (inches), or in pounds. The spines of wood arrows are usually placed in given range of usually 5 pound increments.

Speaking of spine weight...is spine important for matching the arrow "wobble" to the bow weight, shooting around the riser if you don't have a clear center shot, or both?

A center cut bow will be more tolerant of a range of spines. The further from center-cut the more sensitive your bow will be to the correct spine. It's not a bad thing either way and both can be shot accurately,.