Query on tangential fletching

[Cypresswolf]

Good post Kirk!
Just a good example of doing your own testing and finding your favorite combination!
I started archery when I was about 11 years old with a old Lemonwood longbow and wooden arrows.That was in the early fifties! Got really heavy into archery during my college days.Made my own arrows and had  Ben Pearson recurve(50 lbs) and gave the small game and bird fits! Especially starlings! Used wild turkey feathers for 3 fletch with slight offset! Arrows flew well. I now have time to experiment and so will be working on my arrows here shortly to see what I can accomplish!

[Kirkll]

You can have a lot of fun building your own arrows… I did for a long time. I have kind  of an obsessive  compulsive nature, and the ability, or curse depending on how you look at it to really focus on details. 

I had a blast building woodies for a year or so. I  went off the deep end and started turning my own shafts too, and even played with footed shafts a bit. It was seriously time consuming, a lot of fun, and I built some cool arrows for awhile.

But….. it was a heart breaker watching the 3D courses slowly eat my beautiful arrows, and the consistency of arrow flight just wasn’t close enough for competition in an open class for me, and durability kept me from using them as hunting shafts.  So I went back to using carbon shafts…..

Now you can get seriously carried away with building carbon shafts as well, and I did that too.  After all my woody building experience  and the close attention to matching spine necessary. I had my eyes opened to the vast difference in carbon shaft spine tolerances.   Some of These carbon shafts were worse than woodies just rotating them 90 degrees on a spine tester. HUGE differences .  Different manufacturers had different tolerances too. Some of these economy  shafts I could not even come close to building a matched set. I spine tested a bunch of different arrow shafts, and started upgrading my selection with lower tolerances on both hunting and 3D shafts….. I’ll tell ya what…. Matching up your spine on carbon shafts takes all the fight out of bare shaft tuning, and can make the difference between a 10 and a 12 ring quite often….     The pros out there shooting long distance spend more time balancing and blueprinting arrow shafts than messing with their bows. Of That I’m quite certain. Consistency  is the key element.


This is a great sport we have here. You can get obsessed on every aspect if ya have the inclination and the time…..  Have fun with it guys!      Kirk