An Arrowing experience

[Buford]

Calling all wizards of the wooden wand!

come forth and proclaim your passion for the aging art of the arrowsmith.

lay upon me a demonstration of ones prowess for crafting feather and fir.



oh sorry, the switch was stuck on medieval


what i mean is.... can anyone help with a question on arrow making, in particular making of multi coloured feathers?

i have attached a pic to show what i mean.

how do you go about making feathers up out of different colours?

only ways i have thought of is cutting out a section of a feather and replacing it with the same section of another one? but this would wreck one of them therefore costing more.
is there some trick with the use of a feather cutter/ burner? i have never seen one let alone used one so dont know their uses other than cutting out natural feathers.

any suggestions greatly appreciated

Cheers
Buford

[erron]

you're a funny bugger Buford, I'll say that! (Actually, i'll say a lot more, but best not to get me started!)

here you go mate, it's called Feather Splicing:


http://www.stickbow.com/FEATURES/ARROWM ... licing.cfm

cheers,

E.

[Stickbow Hunter]

By the way Buford. An Arrowsmith is a person who makes arrow heads. A Fletcher is a person who makes arrows.

Will catch up again after Easter as Jude and I are off in the morning for a couple of weeks R & R. Hope you all have a safe Easter break.

Jeff

[erron]

Have a great break Jeff!

Talk again you when you get back,

Erron

[Buford]

Thanks gents, now i have something else to keep me off the streets at night!

actually....... a court order keeps me off the streets at night , but thats a story for another day, and we're all out of time.
Thanks for joining me on "The Hot jailHouse"

yeah yeah, i know... .

it's ok. i'm scared too!



Next question, the item at the end of Erron's link (couldn't help myself )
suggests all you need is a feather chopper or burner. Which gives the best results? IYO? and where to obtain one?

preeze consider
konichiwa
Buford San

An Arrowsmith is a person who makes arrow heads. A Fletcher is a person who makes arrows.

got me with your legal mumbo jumbo!

[erron]

Burners apparently stink like heck, choppers do fine for me.

Whitings' have them.



Erron

[ozlongbow]

Buford
Go the burner, your neighbours will love you even more.
Cletus

[Dennis La Varenne]

Buford,

Jeff is correct. Traditionally, the fletcher assembed all the components of the arrow into the finished product. Arrowsmithing was a branch of blacksmithing which specialised in making the metal arrowheads. A Smith was always a kind of metalworker in oldentimes.

Jeff has made quite a few arrows with spliced feathers also.

I have attached a diagram of how to join the two sections. The most important thing is that the slope of the vanes is parallel so that feather does not kink at the join. Also, if the sections are closely parallel, when you butt them together, they tend to cling together during the chopping and gluing process.

If you want to, you can put a dob of glue on the ends of the spines and butt them together but NOT on the vanes themselves. They will then behave a bit more like a single piece feather.

I have looked at the website which Erron posted and I think that it is unnecessarily complicated. You can simply butt the two sections together. The spine does not need to be cut on the slope but it makes a neater join if you do. My drawing has the spine cut on the slope, but square-cut is also good enough, but use a razor blade or something similar which is extremely sharp and thin so you don't crush any of the spine which is to butt together. That makes for a best join.

The smaller stripped-in sections like that shown by the thin arrow in your picture can be done the same way.

So far as expense is concerned, 2 inch sections for the splices is more than enough and the long sections can be around 3½ to 4 inches. Most of the full length feathers are from 8 to 10 inches, so you can work out the relative numbers of each to get.


Dennis La Varenne

[Buford]

thanks all,

when i was trying to figure it uot in my head, the method Dennis has mentioned is the way i thought would be eaisest.
still, reckon i will make em up from a base feather and insert the spliced section from a bit of a full length feather and use a chopper to achieve desired final shape.

will let you know how i get on. thanks again.

Buford

[Tuffcity]

wrc,

The feathers in the pic below were assembled by the method you were thinking about try. Except that I used feathers that were already shaped. The insert feather (black) is cut completely away from the main feather and the quill is sanded down until it is almost non existant. A corresponding section of the main feather (in this pic, the white part) is cut away - but just feather part, the base is left intact- and the insert is then glued in. The base has to be smoothed off a bit, but a nail file works well for this. Sounds time consuming but starts to go fairly quickly once you've done a few. The left over cut feathers are long enough to fletch kid arrows. If the insert is higher than the main feather it can be trimmed with a sharp pair of scissors.



(shafts are yellow cedar)

RC

[erron]

Those are a work of art Richard, unlike my rough and readies!



Erron

[Tuffcity]

Thanks Erron, it was my first concerted effort at building something that took longer than 5 minutes to put together. I made a 1/2 doz of them to shoot at the NALS (North American Longbow Safari) the year it was a couple of hours up the road from here, had to cancel that trip last minute so I never have really used them.

RC