What's the longest feathers out there?

[halfseminole]

I need some feathers about 11" long, up to 13".  I believe I have read that AMS feathers are longer than TrueFlites.  Is that true?  I've got the 7" kyudo feathers from 3 Rivers, but they're well too short.  I'd also like another choice besides white.  

I've got shafts, heads, and all my sinew, bark and stingray skin for my new arrows either here or in the post.  But try stabilizing a quarter of a pound of arrow on 5".  It doesn't work.  Now that I've finally found a style of archery made for my ridiculous draw length, I still have one thing I haven't located, and that's the right feathers.

[dhermon85]

Wild turkey feathers are probably your best bet for a single fletch. You could also probably splice as many of any other feather together to get desired length

[KenH]

Look for pheasant tail feathers for really long fletches.  IIRC that's what a lot of the Chinese arrows were fletched with.  The Ringneck pheasant was, after all native to China...

[ChuckC]

My full length feathers are about 11" long.  I simply cannot imagine three of those, cut pretty full, not being able to stabilize anything up to 2x4 size.  

Remember that you do not want full length ( the whole arrow) feathers as that does not add anything but fluff to your arrow.  The tail end gets the parachute and that should do it.

I would try full length feathers first, before I went nuts on more elaborate stuff.  Make a template and hand cut the buggers after they are on the shaft.

ChuckC

[pinky]

Halfseminole - is this what you are asking about.
 http://www.stanley-park-swans.com/cgi-bin/ask/index.pl?read=5294
I think these would be very difficult to come by, but maybe you know some avid waterfowlers or the internet. There is always splicing. good luck!

[pinky]

sorry, I think i misinterpreted the length you were looking for when i responded. those swans have some long flight feathers though.

[halfseminole]

I'm looking into pheasant now.  Should go great with the leopardwood shafts.

Chuck, 11" of feather sounds like a lot until you realize the SHORT arrows are 38".  There are 44" arrows attested in collections.

[Doug_K]

If your looking for a source, besides pheasant hunters or farmers, fly tying suppliers carry them.

[Pete McMiller]

Edward,

This may be a solution.  You may mitigate the need for excessively long feathers by increasing your FOC.  For 29 1/2" shafts I recently cut back on feather length to 3" and could likely go down to 2" by increasing my FOC to 31.5%.  My arrows fly better now than they ever have.  The key of course is to perfect the spine requirements of your bow and find a shaft stiff enough to handle the extra weight up front, maybe not easy for a shaft as long as yours though.

[halfseminole]

Considering these average 38% FOC and spine 200#+, and weigh on average a quarter to a third of a pound, it's a little hard to slow that down.  

I should have mentioned that these are Manchu arrows, and as such I'm attempting to replicate more than reinvent.

 http://www.manchuarchery.org/arrows

I just can't get eagle or vulture feathers easily.  Or legally.  Not even being Native.

[Pete McMiller]

I see that now.  From the text in your link it appears that fletching feathers varied in length depending on when they were produced and for what purpose.  I would think that one consideration might be the brace height of your bow so the feathers don't rest on the shelf prior to drawing.  Nice project though.

[ChuckC]

gotcha Edward, but that makes nearly the last third or quarter of the shaft "with feather".  You shouldn't need that much.  Mine are 32 1/2 inch shafts and they have 3 - 4" feathers, 4 if I use low height banana feathers, which I sometimes do.

If you feel you gotta have more, put two full length feathers in a row.  I am not aware of any fletching jig that will handle more than , maybe 6" feathers, so all of this will be by hand anyway.

ChuckC

[Fletcher]

I checked some of my old TrueFlight full length feathers and they are mostly 10-11 inches with a few going 12".  I always want to trim some from the front and back, so getting 11 nice inches isn't likely.  Sorry.