Friday 14 October 2011

Primitive Arrow, man make fire!

Ages ago one of the guys from Archery Interchange sent me some bits of Cow horn, antler and some Greylag Goose feathers. I finally got round to using some of the feathers on some of the Hazel shafts I'd cut ages ago. I've only done one for now.
I scraped off the bark, straightened it over a gas ring (they become quite pliable with heat) and stuck the flights on.
I cut the narrow end at the right diameter to fit a regular 5/16" point. The nock is cut with a saw and filed to a sort of keyhole shape so the string is a firm fit to push on, but sits loosely on the string once it is on there e.g the nock has a narrow entrance and is opened out at the bottom. This probably helps to avoid splitting, but that won't be an issue on a 40# bow.
Despite not being dead straight it flies straight enough.
there was a discussion recently on Archery Interchange amongst target archers about whether a bare shaft spins on not... what a load of overthink! Good old natural feathers induce spin because they are curved and one face is much smoother than the other. This is useful in helping to stabilise imperfect arrows. The modern target archer has virtually perfect shafts and puts symmetrical plastic vanes on which he then has to deliberately put on at an angle to generate spin, or to buy fancy 'spin wings' or some such, I even saw a plastic nock with the arrow slot cut on a spiral to induce spin and tiny stub vanes on it too. It just goes to show that sometimes simple and natural is sometimes best. (Of course, these guys doubtless shoot more consistently than I do and I'm just representing my opinion here, so apologies to any target archers reading this!)
My wife didn't like the smell of scorched Hazel in the kitchen, so I got an old saucepan from the garage, and bent some tabs out from the bottom. This making air holes and legs at the same time. I burned some offcuts of assorted bow wood in it. A very cheery conflagration which lasted long enough for me to straighten the other shafts.
The fire in a saucepan amused me rather so here's a pic.

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