Sunday 12 June 2016

Flight Arrow Nocks


The old skirting board seems pretty good for flight arrows, they are thin and stiff, almost as thin as the bamboo, straighter too.
I do the nocks by sawing a slot and letting in a sliver of horn, two flats are filed on tapering to the tip giving just enough width for the string to bear on. Two wings of horn added, these are blended in and then whipped with fine linen thread soaked in low viscosity cyanoacrylate (superglue). It's then sanded down and wiped with epoxy.
You can see I'm refining it and getting the nock slimmer and tidier so it's almost the same diameter as the end of the shaft.
The guy who I'm making these for has just told me he wants four not three, I've got a spare shaft that has a bit of a thin spot in the middle so I've sanded it out flat and glued in a patch. While I had some glue mixed I noticed that the thin off-cuts from when I sawed them out, were about half thickness, so I've glued two of them together as a laminated arrow shaft! Dunno how it will turn out, but with the grain running in slightly different directions maybe it will be more uniform and stable... anyhow, it's an interesting no cost experiment.

5 comments:

  1. Is that ancient Turkish CA?

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    1. LOL, I do have hide glue but it's not very waterproof. The CA/linen thread combo works really well. I do it in front of the self nocks on my regular arrows.

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  3. hi,

    What are the lenghts of your fletchings on your regular arrows and on your flight arrows ?

    Ben

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  4. Hi, 3" on my regular arrows 1.5"on the 32" warbow flight arrows and about 1 1/8 " on shorter flight arrows.

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