Making Medieval Arrows

[GrahameA]

Morning All

Last Sunday I spent the day running a class on "Making/Faking Medieval Arrows". The aim was to provide skills to the participants so that they could make arrows that looked the part even if there were a couple of small cheats in their manufacture.

I supplied the shafts already fitted with hardwood nock insert and the nock rough cut. They had to finish the insert, plane the shaft taper and finsih the nocks.

So this is the some of the merry crew at work.

You can see Shafts being tapered and Fletches being chopped. There are a couple of small cheats happening. The fletches are being cut (couled) using a feather chopper rather than shears. Makes it easier for the people and you get a neater end result.

The fletches were initially stuck to the shafts using fletching tape - easier than hot hide glue and then fully bound.

ArchersAtWork.JPG (55.52 KiB) Viewed 951 times

All the shafts were tapered from the tip to the nock using a small plane and a board to hold them in place. Shafts that were bent were steamed over an urn and straightened.

ShaftTapering3.JPG (53.99 KiB) Viewed 951 times

The point tapers were cut using one of Keith Forrester's Tapering Tools - one of the best investments I ever made. All the arrows have field tips on them. Yes it would have been better to fitted them with "Period Points" but we are still perfecting our arrowhead forging skills.

[pdccr]

Looks good mate

[longbowinfected]

Good on you Grahame and co.

I use the tape plus tie on method even for my aluminium arrows for AA competition.
Great for resisting damage when stump shooting and your arrow goes through thick vegetation.
I use fast flight string, then glue and seal the string ties.
It all loks a bit more trad
They really fly well. I even think they go fractionally better. I remember some discussion a while back on one of the fora that a little raised section before the feathers acted like winglet tips on aircraft wings a la Boeings etc.

Kevin

[GrahameA]

Hi Kevin

I remember some discussion a while back on one of the fora that a little raised section before the feathers acted like winglet tips on aircraft wings a la Boeings etc.

I remember the discussion - but not the contents.

[jape]

I have seen similar discussions in brief and at length on Primitive Archer, and also some of our (presently absent) distance shooting friends got into it once I think.

I can imagine both of our Jeff's would be in rare agreement for once, if we discussed forward air-roil creating less drag and perhaps canards. "Just make a simple bloody arrow and shoot it" (without, or with extra, expletives of course).

I once left some 1/2" forward sections of some trimmed-off broken 4" fletching and replaced in between them with shorter 3" fletches so they sat back a bit. It flew well and flat, didn't make more noise, didn't spiral as most of mine do for reasons I have never worked out and wasn't any slower I could see.