Feather cut mah bow hand!

[Jarrod Reno]

Is this common? Been shooting a featherhorn for a year, picked up a Toelke chinook and landed on 4 fletched 2" rayzrs today but after a few shots had what was a paper cut x100 haha. A feather cut my bow hand right open.

[Jarrod Reno]

Thinking I have a higher grip on the chinook maybe? I don't have the featherhorn anymore to compare. But I also shot the same feathers with that bow.

[macbow]

Many of the quality bows will have your hand close to the shelf.
If you have fat fingers like me then the leading edge on the feathers can make contact.

I wear a golf glove with a piece of leather added  for my bow hand.
Also check that all feather leading edges are glued well and smooth.

[macbow]

Also don't mind wearing the glove, have it camo'd for hunting.

[McDave]

Sometimes this happens when the grip is designed so that the bow hand is close to the arrow, which is a desirable thing, but sometimes can result in the problem you describe.

One thing you can do is to get a sharp knife and taper the ends of the quills on the front side of the feather so they bevel smoothly into the shaft.  Then burnish the tapered parts of the quills down so they are smooth with the backside of a knife or something.  Then put a small dab of Fletchtite on the front of the quill where it meets the shaft.  The goal is to end up with something that glides over your finger rather than slices into it.

[M60gunner]

What McDave says. Every once in awhile this issue comes up. Me, I switched to left wing feathers years ago. No issues. What about raising the nock point a smidge?

[dhermon85]

I had this issue a short while and raising the nock fixed it for me

[Dorado]

I had 1/2" of a feather get stuck in my bowhand. Turned out it was from not getting the leading edge down all the way. Had to cut that feather out of me.

[MnFn]

When I went with a little higher nock point, and a weaker shaft, the problem went away.  I can't say for sure which helped more. But I was considering wearing a glove on my bow hand for awhile.

[Jarrod Reno]

Thanks for the input guys. I shot a few more thinking it was a fluke and just ripped deeper haha. I'm gonna try a couple of the tricks above, also, I just realized that my nock may be a bit low, just bare shafted again and am getting nock high consistently, which hopefully is just the nock height and not my release.

[AZ_Longbow]

may have spooked yourself and flinching on the release trying to dodge the feathers. Had to cut a few out of myself as well.

I can get that with right wing on a right hand bow and the same when matching left to a left hand bow.  Oddly enough, four fletch right wing does not make the cutting contact with either hand. I use to add some serving with sewing thread for the first 1/8" to 1/4" of feather to eliminate it, when I only had a right hand fletcher.

[Yellow Dog]

Yup, extra special attention to the lead edge of the feather when fletching up shafts. For me less of a problem as a right hander shooting left wing.

[SELFBOW19953]

I learned about gluing the leading edge of the feather down when I started shooting off my knuckle on a selfbow.  It definitely gets your attention!!!!!

[1flyfish]

All of the above,how bad is it hitting,it does not take much to cut you,you could also raise the shelf just a hair with a thicker self material,I have done that in the past with good results.

[centaur]

I have some scars on my bow hand pointer finger from feather cuts; since I shoot 3 fletch, I just shoot cock feather in and that solved it for me.

[longbow guy]

yes,shoot cock feather in takes care of that issue. And for some reason I shoot a lot better that way. Again it works for me anyway.

[Tim Finley]

Nock pt. could be off ,wrong spine , 4 fletch lots of things could be the reason . When you say razors do you mean feathers or vanes ?

[Michael Arnette]

I had the same problem with my Teolke grip, it was so close to my hand. I adjusted eventually

[Jarrod Reno]

Originally posted by Tim Finley:
Nock pt. could be off ,wrong spine , 4 fletch lots of things could be the reason . When you say razors do you mean feathers or vanes ?

It's tuning great regarding spine. It's the 2" rayzr feathers right wing helical.