Fletching - Tied
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Fletching - Tied
howdy doody Guys and Gals
yup ... got another Question
how does one tie feathers to their arrows?
what type of cord or string is best?
do you tie through the fletch?
how much around the front and back?
anything else one needs to know??
just call me the sponge ... soaking up all the info possible
thanks
MIK
yup ... got another Question
how does one tie feathers to their arrows?
what type of cord or string is best?
do you tie through the fletch?
how much around the front and back?
anything else one needs to know??
just call me the sponge ... soaking up all the info possible
thanks
MIK
Go to your local library and as for a book called "The Archer's Craft" by adrian Elliott Hodgkin. He tells you how to make arrows, including tying on the feathers. He also tells you how to make an English Longbow from Yew or Lemonwood (if you can find any, and if you can, please let me know).
Norman
Draw, anchor, loose.
Draw, anchor, loose.
Mik,
I have had the Archer's Craft for many years. However, you can also find out how it is done in the Traditional Bowyers Bibles as well. It is not particularly difficult to do at all . . . just time consuming.
If you split your feathers with a razor-blade or similarly sharp knife along the groove down the middle of the quill and use the wider side of the flight feather as I explained elsewhere on this site, you then trim the quill on either side of the vane as close as you can with a pair of scissors.
Then you clamp the whole trimmed vane in a fletching clamp (straight) or between two strips of sheet metal of any kind held together with a big bulldog clip. You can hen grind down the pith by gently dragging it over a sheet of sand paper pinned to a piece of flat wood until it is almost gone.
You then decide how much vane length you want and pull off the rest at both ends of the trimmed and ground feather, leaving at least 2cm of quill extending past the vane at both ends.
Next, on your prepared arrow shaft, you mark the arrow ahead of the string nock in 3 places at 120 degrees apart with a faint pencil line as long as your prepared vanes.
Lay your first vane at the cock feather position at the desired position ahead of the nock, and using a slip-knot on a piece of cotton or serving thread, slip it over the shaft and quill extension, pull it tight, wrap it once again firmly to hold it in postion, then lay the next vane in position and repeat the above, and finally the third vane and do the same.
Check that the vanes are equally spaced whilst holding the thread in your teeth (if you've got any), and then continue wrapping the thread over the exposed quill ends until you almost reach the nock, then tie it off as you would string serving.
That leaves the forward portion of the vanes flapping around. Here, you do pretty much the same, but with a difference.
Aligning your vanes on similarly spaced 120 degree marks, you pull the cock vane tight against the shaft and secure it with a slip-knot as above but looped over the shaft from the pointy end. Start the wrapping about 5mm from the front of the quill (There is a reason for this.), but do it in the direction of the curve of the vane (which if you use right wing feathers, it is handy if you are left-handed but awkward if you are not).
Place the second and third vanes in position similarly to what you did to the tail-end of the arrow, ie. place the vane and hold it down with a couple of loops of thread. Hold the thread with your teeth while you move the vanes into position on the line or slightly offset them above the line.
When all 3 vanes are in position, use a pair of pointy-nose pliers to pull the vanes tightly down on the shaft by the extra 5 mm ahead of the wrapping.
When all 3 vanes are in position and tightly secured, continue with the wrapping of the thread until you reach the start of the feather vane and tie off. In a lot of primitive societies, this was all that was done and worked well, except that the vanes bowed away from the shaft in humid weather. It didn't affect arrow flight though.
With the common European/English feather tying, you did as above, but instead of tying off when you reached the start of the vane, you continued up the vane toward the tail by spiralling the thread between the spines of the vane, keeping a firm tension on the thread to hold the quill against the shaft. This is why you wrap in the direction of the curl of the vane. If you go the other way, it won't work and is a bugger of a job.
The spirals were often about 5mm apart.
Continue the spirals until you reach the other end and bring the thread out onto the previous wrapping a short distance and tie it off also. Trim off the excess bits of quill. Your arrow in now fletched.
Apply a waterproof coating to the thread and along the shaftment between the vanes to protect the thread as much as possible. If you succeed in fletching an arrow this way you will completely understand why arrows were so carefully looked after in olden times quite apart from them being the business end of the bow and arrow thing.
There will be unsightly gaps between the spines of the vanes where you have split them with the thread. To improve the neatness of this, wet the vanes with a spray atomiser (such as you spray pot plants) and let them dry or hold them in the steam from a boiling kettle.
By the way, the shaftment is the area of the arrow shaft between the vanes, extending from the forward point of the vanes back to and including the nock.
Let me know how you go.
Dennis La Varenne
I have had the Archer's Craft for many years. However, you can also find out how it is done in the Traditional Bowyers Bibles as well. It is not particularly difficult to do at all . . . just time consuming.
If you split your feathers with a razor-blade or similarly sharp knife along the groove down the middle of the quill and use the wider side of the flight feather as I explained elsewhere on this site, you then trim the quill on either side of the vane as close as you can with a pair of scissors.
Then you clamp the whole trimmed vane in a fletching clamp (straight) or between two strips of sheet metal of any kind held together with a big bulldog clip. You can hen grind down the pith by gently dragging it over a sheet of sand paper pinned to a piece of flat wood until it is almost gone.
You then decide how much vane length you want and pull off the rest at both ends of the trimmed and ground feather, leaving at least 2cm of quill extending past the vane at both ends.
Next, on your prepared arrow shaft, you mark the arrow ahead of the string nock in 3 places at 120 degrees apart with a faint pencil line as long as your prepared vanes.
Lay your first vane at the cock feather position at the desired position ahead of the nock, and using a slip-knot on a piece of cotton or serving thread, slip it over the shaft and quill extension, pull it tight, wrap it once again firmly to hold it in postion, then lay the next vane in position and repeat the above, and finally the third vane and do the same.
Check that the vanes are equally spaced whilst holding the thread in your teeth (if you've got any), and then continue wrapping the thread over the exposed quill ends until you almost reach the nock, then tie it off as you would string serving.
That leaves the forward portion of the vanes flapping around. Here, you do pretty much the same, but with a difference.
Aligning your vanes on similarly spaced 120 degree marks, you pull the cock vane tight against the shaft and secure it with a slip-knot as above but looped over the shaft from the pointy end. Start the wrapping about 5mm from the front of the quill (There is a reason for this.), but do it in the direction of the curve of the vane (which if you use right wing feathers, it is handy if you are left-handed but awkward if you are not).
Place the second and third vanes in position similarly to what you did to the tail-end of the arrow, ie. place the vane and hold it down with a couple of loops of thread. Hold the thread with your teeth while you move the vanes into position on the line or slightly offset them above the line.
When all 3 vanes are in position, use a pair of pointy-nose pliers to pull the vanes tightly down on the shaft by the extra 5 mm ahead of the wrapping.
When all 3 vanes are in position and tightly secured, continue with the wrapping of the thread until you reach the start of the feather vane and tie off. In a lot of primitive societies, this was all that was done and worked well, except that the vanes bowed away from the shaft in humid weather. It didn't affect arrow flight though.
With the common European/English feather tying, you did as above, but instead of tying off when you reached the start of the vane, you continued up the vane toward the tail by spiralling the thread between the spines of the vane, keeping a firm tension on the thread to hold the quill against the shaft. This is why you wrap in the direction of the curl of the vane. If you go the other way, it won't work and is a bugger of a job.
The spirals were often about 5mm apart.
Continue the spirals until you reach the other end and bring the thread out onto the previous wrapping a short distance and tie it off also. Trim off the excess bits of quill. Your arrow in now fletched.
Apply a waterproof coating to the thread and along the shaftment between the vanes to protect the thread as much as possible. If you succeed in fletching an arrow this way you will completely understand why arrows were so carefully looked after in olden times quite apart from them being the business end of the bow and arrow thing.
There will be unsightly gaps between the spines of the vanes where you have split them with the thread. To improve the neatness of this, wet the vanes with a spray atomiser (such as you spray pot plants) and let them dry or hold them in the steam from a boiling kettle.
By the way, the shaftment is the area of the arrow shaft between the vanes, extending from the forward point of the vanes back to and including the nock.
Let me know how you go.
Dennis La Varenne
Gilnockie,
Try making a longbow from any kind of long-grained Australian hardwood rather than hunting after exotic woods.
I have made a few from Qld soapwood (Alphitona excelsa) and they cast just as well as Osage Orange (Maclura pomifera), Yew (both T. baccata and brevifola) and much better than Lemonwood (Calycophyllum candidissimum). I have made English bows from all of the latter 3.
I am in the process of trying a few others as well. They are far easier to obtain than exotics such as Yew and Lemonwood. We have a seriously untried resource in local timbers I believe.
Dennis La Varenne
Try making a longbow from any kind of long-grained Australian hardwood rather than hunting after exotic woods.
I have made a few from Qld soapwood (Alphitona excelsa) and they cast just as well as Osage Orange (Maclura pomifera), Yew (both T. baccata and brevifola) and much better than Lemonwood (Calycophyllum candidissimum). I have made English bows from all of the latter 3.
I am in the process of trying a few others as well. They are far easier to obtain than exotics such as Yew and Lemonwood. We have a seriously untried resource in local timbers I believe.
Dennis La Varenne
thanks Dennis
i am asking all these questions for future reference, at the moment i dont have a garage or anywhere that i can cause a messs however i am working on setting up a bit of a workshop which i should have operational pretty damn soon - Hopefully!!!
but thanks for the response it is very good
erron wheres that book review section ... got another book i am looking for now
thanks guys once again for all your help
MIK
i am asking all these questions for future reference, at the moment i dont have a garage or anywhere that i can cause a messs however i am working on setting up a bit of a workshop which i should have operational pretty damn soon - Hopefully!!!
but thanks for the response it is very good
erron wheres that book review section ... got another book i am looking for now
thanks guys once again for all your help
MIK
Dennis, where did you obtain the Qld Soapwood? Is it availaable from timber merchants? I live in Hobart and gathering it myself may be a bit awkward.
When you use it to make a bow, do you use the sapwood and the heartwood as with Yew or simply the heartwood as with Osage? Do you back your Osage bows? if so, what do you use.
I tried all the local timbers: Blackwood, Celery Top Pine, King Billy Pine, Myrtle (which is supposed to be suitable) and Tas Oak. I tied laminating different timbers together and I made up fibreglass laminates and tried backing the bows.
The only combination which worked was Huon Pine backed with bamboo I had shipped down from Qld.
In the end I started to play around with timber veneers about 0.6mm thick. And this works well.
One of these days I will play around with bamboo again. This showed remarkable promise but I abandoned it because of the difficulty of laminating two pieces of bamboo together, nodes outward and controlling the taper, back to belly, so as to predict the draw weight. Trying to laminate in a riser as in a conventional laminated longbow I found to be impossible.
Subsequently, I learned that Howard Hill made all his longbows from bamboo. So I guess I was on the right track.
I would appreciate any advice you can give re sourcing materials for self bows.
When you use it to make a bow, do you use the sapwood and the heartwood as with Yew or simply the heartwood as with Osage? Do you back your Osage bows? if so, what do you use.
I tried all the local timbers: Blackwood, Celery Top Pine, King Billy Pine, Myrtle (which is supposed to be suitable) and Tas Oak. I tied laminating different timbers together and I made up fibreglass laminates and tried backing the bows.
The only combination which worked was Huon Pine backed with bamboo I had shipped down from Qld.
In the end I started to play around with timber veneers about 0.6mm thick. And this works well.
One of these days I will play around with bamboo again. This showed remarkable promise but I abandoned it because of the difficulty of laminating two pieces of bamboo together, nodes outward and controlling the taper, back to belly, so as to predict the draw weight. Trying to laminate in a riser as in a conventional laminated longbow I found to be impossible.
Subsequently, I learned that Howard Hill made all his longbows from bamboo. So I guess I was on the right track.
I would appreciate any advice you can give re sourcing materials for self bows.
Norman
Draw, anchor, loose.
Draw, anchor, loose.
Book Review Section
MIK,
remiss of me not to give directions ::
The BOOKS section from the Ozbow home page will take you there.
The first book review is at:
http://www.ozbow.net/book_reviews/Track ... Traces.htm
The links to buy are at the bottom of the page. Warning for Aussies: Amazon now charges criminally high postage!
Cheers,
Erron
remiss of me not to give directions ::
The BOOKS section from the Ozbow home page will take you there.
The first book review is at:
http://www.ozbow.net/book_reviews/Track ... Traces.htm
The links to buy are at the bottom of the page. Warning for Aussies: Amazon now charges criminally high postage!
Cheers,
Erron
Gilnockie,
Soapwood (Alphitonia excelsa) is a species widely distributed in Queensland extending south to about south east NSW. It is also commonly known as Red Ash. You won't find it in a sawmill as it is rarely a commercially sawn species.
As Dennis has mentioned, it can be crafted into a bow of excellent performance, and is probably one of Queensland's most commonly used species for selfbows. I have recently finished a 66" unbacked Red ash bow using the untouched underbark surface as the bow's back. It pulls 52#@27".
Due to its distribution Red ash probably isn't much of an option for you in Tassy. Nevertheless I'm sure there are many very acceptable local species just waiting to be tried. Dennis has mentioned previously in one of his posts about assessing the way a log splits to get a feel for it's potential suitability as a bow wood. Long splinters that hold a log together during splitting and need to be cut with an axe are a good sign. There are also 2 additional excellent tests contained within The Traditional Bowyers Bible - one involves making a small 'test bow' and the other tests bending/breaking in small timber samples.
I would think Acacia melanoxylon (Blackwood) would be worth a try - as might some of your other acacia's.
In addition to the Traditional Bowyer's Bible, The Bent Stick by Paul Comstock is very useful for self bow experimentation.
Good luck
MarkP
Soapwood (Alphitonia excelsa) is a species widely distributed in Queensland extending south to about south east NSW. It is also commonly known as Red Ash. You won't find it in a sawmill as it is rarely a commercially sawn species.
As Dennis has mentioned, it can be crafted into a bow of excellent performance, and is probably one of Queensland's most commonly used species for selfbows. I have recently finished a 66" unbacked Red ash bow using the untouched underbark surface as the bow's back. It pulls 52#@27".
Due to its distribution Red ash probably isn't much of an option for you in Tassy. Nevertheless I'm sure there are many very acceptable local species just waiting to be tried. Dennis has mentioned previously in one of his posts about assessing the way a log splits to get a feel for it's potential suitability as a bow wood. Long splinters that hold a log together during splitting and need to be cut with an axe are a good sign. There are also 2 additional excellent tests contained within The Traditional Bowyers Bible - one involves making a small 'test bow' and the other tests bending/breaking in small timber samples.
I would think Acacia melanoxylon (Blackwood) would be worth a try - as might some of your other acacia's.
In addition to the Traditional Bowyer's Bible, The Bent Stick by Paul Comstock is very useful for self bow experimentation.
Good luck
MarkP
-
- Posts: 1776
- Joined: Sun Sep 07, 2003 10:56 pm
- Location: Tocumwal, NSW. Australia
Gilnockie,
As MarkP has just posted, Soapwood is probably not an option for you because it is not commercially available. Mine was cut whilst I was in Qld. But, I am looking around and trying out Vic hardwoods when I can. I have rarely backed any of my selfwood bows, and when I did, it was only because I was a bit nervous about a particular bow such as the short flatbow I made from Soapwood which was only 50 inches long and drew 60 lbs at 26inches with only about half and inch of string follow. I backed it with ordinary jute string which looked quite nice when finished. But, I have made others of 60 inches and longer without any backing.
I have made quite a few English longbows from Osage Orange too. The last one I made had the sapwood left on against the advice of all the American literature. Ordinarily, the sapwood on Osage degrades rapidly, but if you chip off the bark and spray it quite liberally with an ordinary kitchen tabletop disinfectant it stops the decay altogether.
This particular Osage longbow had the full 7 growth rings of sapwood left on and was nearly half an inch thick along the full length of the limbs. It retained about quarter of an inch of reflex which is almost unheard of in an English longbow desigh because of the extreme tension/compression strains on the wood due to the thickness.
Osage ALWAYS has 7 layers of sapwood which abruptly convert to hardwood unlike Yew which often gradually turns to heartwood, with the conversion layers often not distinct at all. This makes it problematical to have a consistent thickness of sapwood for the full length of the stave without cutting through a growthring layer - which then necessitates backing the bow.
However, neither Osage nor Soapwood need any kind of backing at all in ordinary length bows, particularly flatbows. Soapwood is almost entirely sapwood with a small pipe core of hardwood in the centre which is often not large enough to be useful I have found. Osage is normall used without the sapwood. It can look like plastic when you find a brilliant flouro yellow piece and it can get to a dark burnt orange colour. It ages to an even turd-brown colour unfortunately, but takes a beautiful polish.
My current Osage flatbow is a 65lb 60 inch flatbow, 1 1/2" wide which came from a stave which had 5" of astoundingly even reflex over the whole length and still holds 2" of reflex. Its limbs are parallel width for 2/3 of their length tapering in the last 1/3 to 3/8" tips. This bow is very unusual. It is full of lengthwise splits and cracks which I have treated by pinning them with bamboo toothpicks and superglue. Works well.
I am not interested in backing bows. As Glenn Newell once wrote in the Archery Action, the nature of our hardwoods is such that they grow all year around and that we don't have the problem of the pithy early spring growth between the later hardwood during the summer that the northern hemisphere woods seem to have.
Ours seem to be more like tropical hardwoods with little seasonal differentiation in the heartwood/sapwood. Possibly, we could have more suitable bow woods available here than in the north because of this, if we but knew it.
MarkP could elaborate more on this, being a forester by trade. Again, have a go at any hardwood which is really stringy when split, but make sure you know the exact species including its scientific name because we all want to know what specific woods are usable. Common names for woods are often useless because the same name is often used in different localities to refer to different species.
Try blackwood as he suggests, if you can find a clear length with no bloody borers in it.
You are correct about Howard Hill using bamboo laminates for his bows. His grinding technique is described in Craig Ekins's book - Howard Hill, the Man and the Legend. However before you get too excited about this kind of bow, the design was not necessarily more efficient than any kind of selfbow. By Hill's own account, his bows were ugly but functional and his 87lb bow which he called 'Grandpa' had a point blank range of only 55 yards (50m).
I knew a bloke who actually met him shortly after WWII and watched him do his trick shooting which was breathtaking. But he told me that his equipment looked very ordinary indeed and the feathers on his arrows looked as if trained rats had nibbled them into shape.
Go for the flat selfbow. It is durable and less trouble to make than gluing laminates if you take reasonable care and steam a bit of reflex into the limbs (not more than 2" in a flatbow). Unlike most selfbow makers that I have met, keep your tips as fine as you can. 3/8" is good and wide enough for string grooves even though it looks too narrow. It makes them nice to shoot, takes any kick out of the bow and does increase cast a little.
Dennis La Varenne
As MarkP has just posted, Soapwood is probably not an option for you because it is not commercially available. Mine was cut whilst I was in Qld. But, I am looking around and trying out Vic hardwoods when I can. I have rarely backed any of my selfwood bows, and when I did, it was only because I was a bit nervous about a particular bow such as the short flatbow I made from Soapwood which was only 50 inches long and drew 60 lbs at 26inches with only about half and inch of string follow. I backed it with ordinary jute string which looked quite nice when finished. But, I have made others of 60 inches and longer without any backing.
I have made quite a few English longbows from Osage Orange too. The last one I made had the sapwood left on against the advice of all the American literature. Ordinarily, the sapwood on Osage degrades rapidly, but if you chip off the bark and spray it quite liberally with an ordinary kitchen tabletop disinfectant it stops the decay altogether.
This particular Osage longbow had the full 7 growth rings of sapwood left on and was nearly half an inch thick along the full length of the limbs. It retained about quarter of an inch of reflex which is almost unheard of in an English longbow desigh because of the extreme tension/compression strains on the wood due to the thickness.
Osage ALWAYS has 7 layers of sapwood which abruptly convert to hardwood unlike Yew which often gradually turns to heartwood, with the conversion layers often not distinct at all. This makes it problematical to have a consistent thickness of sapwood for the full length of the stave without cutting through a growthring layer - which then necessitates backing the bow.
However, neither Osage nor Soapwood need any kind of backing at all in ordinary length bows, particularly flatbows. Soapwood is almost entirely sapwood with a small pipe core of hardwood in the centre which is often not large enough to be useful I have found. Osage is normall used without the sapwood. It can look like plastic when you find a brilliant flouro yellow piece and it can get to a dark burnt orange colour. It ages to an even turd-brown colour unfortunately, but takes a beautiful polish.
My current Osage flatbow is a 65lb 60 inch flatbow, 1 1/2" wide which came from a stave which had 5" of astoundingly even reflex over the whole length and still holds 2" of reflex. Its limbs are parallel width for 2/3 of their length tapering in the last 1/3 to 3/8" tips. This bow is very unusual. It is full of lengthwise splits and cracks which I have treated by pinning them with bamboo toothpicks and superglue. Works well.
I am not interested in backing bows. As Glenn Newell once wrote in the Archery Action, the nature of our hardwoods is such that they grow all year around and that we don't have the problem of the pithy early spring growth between the later hardwood during the summer that the northern hemisphere woods seem to have.
Ours seem to be more like tropical hardwoods with little seasonal differentiation in the heartwood/sapwood. Possibly, we could have more suitable bow woods available here than in the north because of this, if we but knew it.
MarkP could elaborate more on this, being a forester by trade. Again, have a go at any hardwood which is really stringy when split, but make sure you know the exact species including its scientific name because we all want to know what specific woods are usable. Common names for woods are often useless because the same name is often used in different localities to refer to different species.
Try blackwood as he suggests, if you can find a clear length with no bloody borers in it.
You are correct about Howard Hill using bamboo laminates for his bows. His grinding technique is described in Craig Ekins's book - Howard Hill, the Man and the Legend. However before you get too excited about this kind of bow, the design was not necessarily more efficient than any kind of selfbow. By Hill's own account, his bows were ugly but functional and his 87lb bow which he called 'Grandpa' had a point blank range of only 55 yards (50m).
I knew a bloke who actually met him shortly after WWII and watched him do his trick shooting which was breathtaking. But he told me that his equipment looked very ordinary indeed and the feathers on his arrows looked as if trained rats had nibbled them into shape.
Go for the flat selfbow. It is durable and less trouble to make than gluing laminates if you take reasonable care and steam a bit of reflex into the limbs (not more than 2" in a flatbow). Unlike most selfbow makers that I have met, keep your tips as fine as you can. 3/8" is good and wide enough for string grooves even though it looks too narrow. It makes them nice to shoot, takes any kick out of the bow and does increase cast a little.
Dennis La Varenne
-
- Posts: 1776
- Joined: Sun Sep 07, 2003 10:56 pm
- Location: Tocumwal, NSW. Australia
Gilnockie,
Further to the above, I believe that Howard Hill overcame his problem of with bamboo nodes by gluing parallel-ground laminates of bamboo together and backing this stave with another laminate of outer bamboo with the rind and nodes on it.
He the glued his handle block on it and simply treated the whole thing as a selfbow and scraped/ground the taper into it on the belly side until he obtianed his draw weight - just like a selfbow. You can see pictures of this consruction technique in Ekin's book. He also whipped (served) the limbs at intervals along some of his bows as a precaution against limb separation.
Your only problem with this technique is to allow the correct thickness of laminates for intended draw weight before tapering.
Dennis La Varenne
Further to the above, I believe that Howard Hill overcame his problem of with bamboo nodes by gluing parallel-ground laminates of bamboo together and backing this stave with another laminate of outer bamboo with the rind and nodes on it.
He the glued his handle block on it and simply treated the whole thing as a selfbow and scraped/ground the taper into it on the belly side until he obtianed his draw weight - just like a selfbow. You can see pictures of this consruction technique in Ekin's book. He also whipped (served) the limbs at intervals along some of his bows as a precaution against limb separation.
Your only problem with this technique is to allow the correct thickness of laminates for intended draw weight before tapering.
Dennis La Varenne
Thanks for all the advice.
The only local woods I have not tried to make a self bow from are Leatherwood and Horizontal Scrub. Both should be suitable I believe, but I don't have the time to experiment at present.
All my spare time is taken up with building laminated longbows. I make these from local timber veneers and from glass laminates I make myself. When I can clear the workload I have I will try the self bows again.
I understand that Osage Orange was used in Victoria to form wind breaks in paddocks. Does anyone know if it is possible to purchase a stave of Osage?
The only local woods I have not tried to make a self bow from are Leatherwood and Horizontal Scrub. Both should be suitable I believe, but I don't have the time to experiment at present.
All my spare time is taken up with building laminated longbows. I make these from local timber veneers and from glass laminates I make myself. When I can clear the workload I have I will try the self bows again.
I understand that Osage Orange was used in Victoria to form wind breaks in paddocks. Does anyone know if it is possible to purchase a stave of Osage?
Norman
Draw, anchor, loose.
Draw, anchor, loose.