To the Bone! The primitive Rendezvous 2014

[Sockrsblur]

Halfseminole out of curiosity do you have a recipe in mind for your ppg? What ingredients? There are so many variations from my reading. Post some pictures when u can, good luck!

[Pat B]

I cook it too but on our wood stove. It will be a while before I heat that thing up.    :D

[Cyclic-Rivers]

Originally posted by Knawbone:
 I transitioned the bone antler to the obsidian flakes and   Raped  the shaft back a full one inch as suggested by Pat B.
 

Careful David with Pat's advice Raping an arrow sounds dangerous and bloody      

Forgive me I couldn't help it.  

Your set up looks AWESOME!

[Sockrsblur]

O my!  

[Knawbone]

 Thanks Charlie, actually it wasn't too  bad of an experience! You should try it some time!    :eek:

[neuse]

Super job, this is a great post to follow.

[Sockrsblur]

Shaft # 11 of 14...
With only 3 more shafts to finish before hunting begins the task has since taken on a different feel. Almost to enjoy what I've learned and savor the work that is left I'm now doing each shaft individually to its completion. Unlike my new dozen brightly Fletched MFXs leaning against the wall natural redosier and wild rose shafts are each individuals. The organic material decides the thickness for the spine, regardless of what you had in mind starting you just don't know until you start scraping, sanding and checking the spine where it will end.

If you remember I wanted bark on all my shafts so they looked like they were, tamed wild sticks. This particular shaft was unusually stubborn. It was sanded, scraped, fluted, planned and sanded so much more that the groves I gouged into it disappeared to dust on the table. It stayed to stiff and to heavy so I kept setting it to the side and I would notice it days later and be in the mood to abuse it more till one day it gave in and hit a 450 spine at 620 grains. I was almost shocked.

It was mostly out of my stubbornness and curiosity that the shaft made the use pile but all the work done to it had more than removed all the bark, I went well into the wood to weaken and lighten it. Then came the day I clear coated all the shafts... this piece of wood came alive. I had removed enough wood to get into a layer of wood that transported water and nutrition for the branch... the plumbing inside. Pictures surely will not do justice to the speckled, twisty, worm like patterns of these little tubes that cover the entire length of the light blonde shaft...

[Sockrsblur]

To me this was a special shaft so with my new pitch glue I mounted my first successful self-made obsidian stone point to it. I had to carefully reduce the stones weight to 80gr while keeping the NYS minimum of 1" to hit the magic 700gr weight of all the other shafts. The stone survived my amature efforts and attached nicely.
   

Wanting something more for the shaft I remembered a beautiful piece of cherry bark I cut off a fallen tree at camp. I found it in the shop and pulled it out. I had scraped and scrubbed it with dawn then with weight pressed it flat a year ago.

   

I thought I could add the deep red, silvery bark as an accent to hold on the fetching and give the arrow further character.

[Sockrsblur]

I cut a more manageable strip and hand sanded it down as thin as I could, washed it again, then cut thin stripped off it and later wrapped those strips around a shoot to help shape them as they will be used. Any fatal weak flaws become quickly apparent as the bark is stressed.

   

   

This also allowed me to measure their approximate coverage area related to length.

 

[Sockrsblur]

Cherry bark seems to have good strength but not wanting to chance it on the harvest of a deer I still wanted the known strength of sinew behind the stone point and at the knock. Here are some pictures of how #11 has come so far...

   

Closer to the point the bark is wrapped over it self as it finishes at the feathers it's thinned and given a small and short wrap of sinew for insurance.

   

   

   

[Sockrsblur]

I think once everything dries extra good I might put a cherry bark lashing over the sinew behind the obsidian head just to finish the arrow nicely...

     

   

What I thought to be an ugly pale white skinny shaft finished happily as my favorite individual so far. Thanks for looking guys..

On to # 12 of 14...

[halfseminole]

Cherry bark is a traditional over sinew wrap on Manchu arrows.  It's quite strong, you should have no issues with it.  Wish I had some.

[Sockrsblur]

Shaft 12 of 14...
Wild rose shoot,
The first of two green glass heads I was able to create from the unusually flat bottom port wine bottle my brother Kenny gave me for Christmas. It actually broke in half as I pushed to hard being to aggressive. Luckily I was able to make something of both pieces.

 

 

It's not perfect. I failed to thin the base as much as I wanted so I couldn't gradually taper it as much as I would have.
 

 

 

[Pat B]

Not to butt in...but here is an arrow I made for an arrow trade on PA. Sourwood shoot shaft with self nock, dacite point(knapper unknown)hafted with pitch glue and sinew wrap. Self nock has sinew wrap below it and turkey tail Eastern Woodland style 2 fletch tied on with sinew. All sinew wraps and the shaft are sealed with pitch varnish. This arrow is 28" long and weighs 547grs.
   

 

   

[Sockrsblur]

Awesome Pat! You couldn't contribute enough, no worries here buddy.
Eastern Woodland style 2 fletch... I'm going to look that up... good stuff!

[Pat B]

Note how the feather is laid up side down, concave up. I don't know if this was a traditional way of doing this but we found by doing it like this the feather lays flatter along the shaft.
 There is also a 3 fletch with whole 4" long feathers that is also traditional and works very well. Lots of good feathers get thrown away because most folks don't think the will work for fletching.
 You do have to be careful what feathers you mess with too. In the US the majority of the feathers you would find would be illegal to use. They have been federally protected for over 100 years.  Feathers from game birds(turkey, geese, ducks, etc.) or exotics(parrots, pheasants, starlings,)would be OK to use.
Turkeys and geese have quite a few 3" to 4" feathers in their wings.

[cacciatore]

One of the best threads ever,thanks so much for posting!

[Knawbone]

Awesome job James, Your obviously pretty handy with your hands. I have some things I need done around the house when you come.      And you thought you were coming to hunt!

[ron w]

This stuff is just nuts.......Keep up the entertaining post........  

[Cyclic-Rivers]

Awesome stuff Guys.

Oh and David.... Thanks but I'll pass