Spral wrapping fletch?

[Evil Dog]

Ordered a roll of the 15# artificial sinew from 3 Rivers Archery thinking that it might be thin enough.... seems like it just might work.



This was my first attempt..... just have to work on making the wrap spacing more even.

[Minuteman]

I buy nylon upholstery thread at wal-mart.

[brokennock]

 I get 50 pund artificiaL sinew from 3Rivers. I've found many uses for it. Including splitting it into 3 strands and wraping fletching with it. I spiral wrap from nock end to leading tip. Then add a drop of Elmers white glue, wrap a collar around the leading tip and tie off with the loop pull method. Add another drop of glue spread it evenly around then use the my thumbnail and compress the collar and wipe away excess glue. When finished the collar almost looks solid, you have to look close to see the thread wraps building it up.

[Rod]

Evil Dog,
Try putting the shaft in a vise and count the vanes of the fletch with a needle, picking them apart every 5 or 6 vanes. This is the easy way to make a close and regular spacing.
To be honest, thread strength is less important if you are going to seal the shaftment with a verdigris based varnish, as was the usual practice with the English war shaft.
Judging by the Mary Rose shafts, where you can still see the traces of embedded thread in the shaftment coating, this should  render the fletch binding almost indestructible.
I guess it also helps preserve the fletches on the stored shafts, the mediaeval equivalent of putting mothballs in your arrow storing tube.
Most of all it stops or cuts down the incidence of the thread being broken when you bury a shaft in the grass, which is how most of the bindings on my unsealed shaftments got broken, sooner or later.
Rod.

[tomm]

Dave I use the thread that is used to tie fishing rod eyes on strong but not very big. tried to find your store a weed or so back didn't find ya was going to say hi. tomm

[bootboy]

those are some really beautiful arrows boys. Keep up the great work.

[Primitive1]

One of the interesting aspects of wrapping your fletching down that hasn't been mentioned yet; feathers are unique and can have different vane 'stiffness'.  I never really paid attention to this until recently when I unwrapped some arrows and noticed that although the spacing was fine between the vanes, some of the vanes were lazier than the others and had a tendency to lay down.  I'm going to pay more attention to this aspect on this next round and pick feathers with similar vane stiffness; this might be more of an issue with natural Turkey feathers, though I'm not sure...