halfeye and bowtarist, thanks for the kind words
On your fletching jig, are you using that in some way to help with the spiral wrapping? Just looking at the picture, not sure how it works. Maybe you could post a few pictures of it in operation?
Good question! The fletching jig is stupid simple (I designed it after all
). Each "bay" has a shallow groove which the arrow shaft rests in. In the back board (with the numbers) are shallow holes, just deep enough to accept the nock end of the shaft and hold it. Most of the arrow shaft sticks out past the front.
With the shaft(s) in place, a prepped feather is inserted into the wooden "clamps" (though there is no clamping pressure, the "clamps" are just two blocks of wood with a duct tape hinge and lined with packing tape to keep excess glue from sticking), then the wood clamp with feather is slid into its "bay". After the glue is dry the clamp comes out and one more feather is glued to the shaft.
Only after all the feathers are glued on do I wrap the ends, and in this case, included a spiral wrap. Spiral wrap is not necessary since the arrows are glued to the shaft their entire length.
If there is sufficient interest I can do a "How-To" post on creating such a jig. It's easy, and in my case free (if you have the right scrap wood). I came up with the design so I could fletch as many arrows as quickly as possible with as little work as possible. Clearly I'd rather be making bows
