Fletch an Arrow with Natural Feathers

"Under the most favorable circumstances, however, the most skillful Indian workman can not hope to complete more than a single arrow in a hard day's work. In a short fight, or an exciting dash after game, he will expend as many arrows as will keep him busily at work for a month to replace."

You want generous, robust and long feathering on your shaft; this will provide you with a very forgiving arrow which as the feathers wear with shooting, will still provide guide.

A powerful draw will need to make up for an over fletched arrow and good skill with a bow will need to make up for scant feathering.

Using small feathers is fine, but they will wear to useless sooner so you will need to put four or more on your shaft to maintain a strong guide potential.

Unlike the archers of yore, we can't get most big feathers ethically as many of the birds feathers these archers had used came from birds which are today near too or are extinct; so - if you have feathers short or long, you want to be able to use as many as you can from a bird or to be able to bring to use a random floor feather.

I prefer a lot of feathering on my shafts. Shooting an under fletched or heavily dammaged fletch is something akin, I'm guessing, to trying to pilot a rocket or plane with dammaged wings.

I like to have long veins on my shafts with short feathering; so, while  using only short feathers, don't be afraid to put three or four on the shaft, and then another three or four in front of those ; these arrow will fly a bit touchy, but this style of fletching, which I made up, will work and will use the extra small feathers left or found on the ground.

However, idealy you want to select the long wing feathers of a bird. The tail feathers will work well too. You want to use rigid feather portions; soft feathering tends to just flap down and become useless; the difference has more to do with spieces than location the feather has grown from.

All feathers used must have the vein lip (the majority of the vein surface that run its length) on the same side. In other words, from the same wing of the bird.

There are two methods of splitting a feather. The first is the following, but it often involves discarding one side of the feather.

At the quill end of the feather, there is, at the beginning, a portion where the feathering abruptly grows toward the opposite side of the  vein; from the down-less tip (quill) begining of the feather to where said cross over ends, and the rest of the feathering continues up one side of the vein, the feathering must be removed.

 Grab the feathering where the transition from one side to the other begins and firmly peel down and away.
 

If a second arrow feather can be made of the other side of the feather, do the same to the feathering there. Refuse feathering to my experience can be used as a wick for an oil lamp, insulation and decoration or discarded.

The next step is to remove the excesses hard vein of the feather. Cut with a sharp tool roughly a cm from where the feathering ends.

The two "sides" of the feather must now be split down the center. Find the line in the centre of the quill on the feather, and follow it with the tip of a sharp tool as far possible. When it can not be split any further just cut through the feathering on the side which won’t be used or discarded to the length required.

Remove from the vegne the excesses feathering. I don’t worry about having perfectly similar fletch from arrow to arrow; this would be impossible with natural feathers, a waste of veins, and for my style of shooting pointless. Obviously, you will naturally try to achieve a symilarity however. Over time, natural feathering will take a rough, leaving discrepancies between arrows. Do aim to have the same feather surface and hair rigidity from feather to feather on a given arrow.

Clean the gunk and uneven vein remaining on the underside by using a sharp tool. Try to make the whole underside perpendicular to the feathering above. Save excess feathering or return it to the woods.

The second method of splitting the feather is faster and you can salvage both sides of feather, however it risks damaging both sides of the feather in the process.

Select a feather and put the quill end in your front teeth. Hold firmely the feathers of one side, at the other end and with your other hand, the vein and some feathering of the other side. Pull the two feather sides apart startingfrom the feather tip, keeping the quill tight between all three points.

Some feathers may tear away at the beginning, try again further up. 

Once split, sort, clean and prepare for wrapping as shown bellow.

The arrow vanes are now ready for storage and sorting with similar feathers once a few feathers have gone through said previous steps.

You should be able to match veins which when measured, cut to length and fletched and maybe trimmed, produce a conistant air resisance between the arrow feathers; but don’t worry too much about making the feathers on a single shaft perfectly symmetrical as this has little to do with an arrow that shoots true while shooting a shaft from instinct.

Once three of similar shape are found, cut their length of hard vein to near equal, and remove a 1/2cm of feathering from the end so the ammount of feathering is equal on all three feather veins. 

You may be using more than three or four feathers. Eventually you will grasp how much feather is enough to keep a shaft true to your needs.

The excess feathering protruding from back of the vein can be cut away. You may also consider removing excess feather from the top edge of the vein which you are certain wont be required for arrow flight when finished fletching. Also remove the white vein pidth at this point. 

Natural sinew must now be wet in the mouth, or soaked in water thoroughly. The longest sinews are ideal. Once the sinew is soaked, position and hold all three feathers from the shaved front ends, around the wood shaft. Position the veins such that the ends, closest to the knock, are roughly 2.5 inchs from the deepest part of the knock groove. I prefer them a distance of length which is just short the length of my index finger forward of the knock; I shoot with the arrow on the outside of the bow and my index finger rests on the shaft to hold it secure to the stave (Slavic hold).

If my finger rested on the feathers they would scrunch and have a negative affect on their performance. If your feathers get scrunched like those shown below, you can briefly run water over the feather and they will easily straighten back out. Spin the shaft so the excess water does not linger.

Note the scrunching at the front of the feather due to the bow shelf.

Carfully, with a generously thick strip of sinew begin wrapping the veins to the shaft at the forward end of the feathers. After three tight wraps, adjust the feather so that they are spaced equally from one another. 

If you are wrapping four veins to the shaft , wrap two across from one another, securely with a tight loop, then the other two with the next wrap around. Don't try and secure all four on the first loop.

Wrap multiple loops and knot to secure. When looping sinew in one spot - as would be done at the front of the fletching, the back, and forward of the knock - zig zag over and across the looped threads; this helps to keep the loops from freying and unspiraling after abusive use. Keep the bind as tight as you can while you continue the spiral wrap up. Use a generous thread as you can then confidently wrap the veins secure to the shaft without the thread end pulling away mid wrap.  

Air on the side of well spaced spiral wrapps. These arrows bellow have far too many wraps along the vein. The sinews spiral job is realy to keep the vein on the shaft until the final step when the glue is added, as it's really the generous glue that has dried which will hold the feather long after the spiral sinew has fallen away and the arrow has taken shot after shot. 

This sinew is too thin.

This is a good weight of sinew to use. Save the longest sinew for fletching, I dont often use sinew to sew buckskin when a buckskin thong works.

Once the full feather and stripped end have been bound with sinew, check to make sure the veins are equally seated around the shaft. If they need much adjustment, redo the binding. If only a little adjustment is necessary, an awl or other sharp tool can be used to move the length of already sinew bound vein. 

The vein of the feather should have a slight helical, when the feather is finished being wrapped to the shaft.

The spacing of the vein must be even with the same portion of the adjacent vein on the shaft. While wrapping the veins, check and adjust the spacing between veins. You should make sure they are tight, flush with the shaft by pulling the feather in the knock direction. Once properly positioned and the sinew woven through the section of feather fibers, pinch the vein with the sinew using the wrap and hold the sinew down with your thumb. Repeat until you reach the end of the feathers. 

When the sinew threads nears their end, simply, tightly twist it, while wet, with about 2.5 inches overlapping a new sinew thread and continue wrapping to the shaft tightly, frequently checking feather spacing; this takes some pracitce and learned finger work. Be generous with sinew when wrapping feathers; you want secure connections that wont come undone - though despite best efforts, they often will in time - and an arrow will never be a huge investment of sinew. The tight shaft bind, drying of the sinews in a tight twist, and glue added later will maintain a solid connection and wrap. Worn feathers will eventually need to be replaced  even on a well looked after shaft.

It is now necessary to reinforce the sinew wrappings with hide glue. The glue will keep the knots from coming undone, sinew from fraying during arrow use, and the feather vein lengths from migrating around the shaft shot after shot. 

To glue, get hard, hide glue flakes and mix with some water to make the paste. The water must be warmed and the paste thick. 

Use a pointed stick or small brush to apply your glue. A small brush can be made from a feather quill tip with some of the feather of the opposite end, shoved into the hole and glued, but a simple tooth pick will work best.

Apply the wet glue generously around the sinew at the front end of the fletching then apply up one side of a vein. Apply the glue over the sinew wrappings at the other end and then apply it down the side of each remaining vein. Just apply it where the feather vein is touching the wood shaft. You don't have to get the glue underneath the feather; the glue seeps under there.

Also, use glue to secure the spiraled sinew connections.

When hot, fresh glue is added, keep the shaft pointed to the ground and let the glue dry in this position; this helps to avoid glue running onto the feather. 

I use a separate already glue soaked sinew thread, and make a few wraps with the sinew right beneath the knock groove; wrapping sinew here will stop the bow string from destroying the knock on a wood shaft upon arrow release. It also protects the knock woods as I practice in a pretty rough way with my shafts. Dont wrap sinew wet, then glue it later as this will be significantly weaker - soak the sinew with glue, then wrap - except when working on the flatching. Wrapping glue covered sinew to feathers is not a task I'd be willing to expirament with; for the knock sinew wrap step this is necessary. 

This technique of fletching is surprisingly resistant to water but it's a good idea to avoid too much moisture.