Dustybaer's experiments with twin fletch arrows, and the fact that I smashed too many of my primitive arrows at the weekend made me think about making a set of twin fletched arrows based on the ones I used to make as a kid.
Garden centre bamboo, 4 inch nails as points and some feather tied on. They used to work well enough for me then, so why not make some now and use them at a primitive shoot this weekend?
I started working on the bamboo canes Monday evening. I used a methylated spirit burner for heat and straightened the canes. I m alwys suprised at how a really bending bamboo can be turned into a very straight arrow. I cut the basic nocks and bound them with silk and superglue. Horrid stuff but it is quick. I drilled the point ends with a 4.5mm drill, cut the heads off the 4 inch nails and shoved the nail in leaving 1.5 inches of steel point showing and tightly whipped the end of the shaft with waxed linen for about 4 inches.
Tuesday evening I used some black full length fletchings, cut to 5 inches. I cut the fletch back from the ends to give space for binding. To speed things up I used fletching tape and stuck the fletchings on by eye, binding front and back with black silk thread. I put the fletchings on straight. Having seen South American native arrows that fly very well with such straight twin fletchings I thought I would not put any helical in.
Once all on I trimmed the fletchings down to stand 1 inch high. I rebound the nocks with a bit more silk to build them up a bit and then recut them with a file.
Wednesday I had a morning appointment, then the day to myself so could finish them off. I weighed the arrows, which came out with three around 600 grains, five around 650 grains and four somewhat heavy at between 700 and 750 grains. I put some red, white and blue silk at the nock ends to show which are which and Wednesday afternoon took them to my flied archery club to try out.
They fly very well. Just one seems to waggle a bit and may need refletching.
Penetration isn't a problem. One penetrated a slightly soft two inch board and the point came out the other side, needing to be dug out. As I am very good at hitting the wooden parts of our targets I lost two points, but they were very easy to replace when I got back home.
I'm lookingf forward to using them at the weekend. They seem effective, very quick and cheap to make.
I quite look forward to seeing the reaction at thr weekend to these modern primitive arrows.
