I’m still looking for a piece of bone or suitable stone for an arrow head but some unfortunate bird conveniently left half of its wing near my campsite, so at least I got the fletching done.
I also don’t even have a bow but maybe that’s the next project then.
I made arrows a long time ago using dowels from the hardware store so they would be straight. Boy did they not fly straight haha. It’s an art form you practice to get good at it. Your aesthetics beats mine right off the bat.
That’s looking pretty good, especially if it’s your first go! The feathers look nicely shaped, even, and at the right angles. The one thing I’d say is, make sure you leave enough space at the back of the shaft, you’ve got these very near the end, and by the time you’ve cut the nock (the groove the bowstring sits in) there’s not going to be enough space for your fingers on the bowstring if you have then near the nocking point.
I intend to trim the feathers a bit but I didn’t have scissors with me and didn’t want to attempt it with a knife.
Looks pretty good. Used to do a fair bit of archery, but my arrows were still made with modern tools/glues. Going fully primitive self made tools is certainly appealing until you see one break and think at all that work it took to make.
Yeah it’s quite a bit of work. I don’t think I’d have the heart to actually shoot this even if I did have a bow. I put way too much effort into it. They recommend making these in batches of 5 if you’re actually intending to use them too. This is more of a proof of concept.
Agree that you want batches.
If you are interested in using them you may want to look up Dutch arrows, it’s an arrow you can throw with a bit of string.
Only thrown them once before, I would like to try stuff like that again but I don’t really have the space to do it and suspect it would be illegal to use on public land here in the UK.
Atlatls are another fun one, bigger though. More of a javelin.
I’ve been getting into slingling a bit. It’s wildly inaccurate but you can reach impressive distances and it packs quite the punch.
That’s sick, and looks great. (Though I have no experience fletching arrows)
You can make a bow out of nearly anything, if you want to make a durable and high performance bow, that’s a different story.
But start cheap and easy.
I like this channel a lot because he removes a lot of the mystery and prestige from being a bowyer. https://youtu.be/PAFadJJFwsE?is=NC7y8r4zVlE1hmQK
You can collect tree resin and turn that into pitch/ tar.
It makes such a great glue, that it was used for millennia by stone age men and many generations after that, until recent.
You can use it to reinforce the tip of the feather shaft or attach the tip.
For the tip, I recommend using metal of some sort. Sure, it could also work with (flint) stone, but there’s a reason copper, later bronze, later iron, dominated for that use case. It can be mined and processed relatively “easy”, even without a smeltering furnace, especially copper and bronze.
But that is all another level :)Yeah I actually thought about meltin some spruce resin over the thread to prevent it from coming undone.
May it fly true
You know, I never really understood how fletching works until just now.
I mean, I still wouldn’t know how to do it, but I think I get the overall concept.
The primitive way is to use animal sinew instead of a modern string. You apply it wet and once it dries it shrinks tighter and glues onto itself.
