I’m still looking for a piece of bone or suitable stone for an arrow head but some unfortunate bird conveniently left half of its wing near my campsite, so at least I got the fletching done.
I also don’t even have a bow but maybe that’s the next project then.
Neat!! Good job!
That’s looking pretty good, especially if it’s your first go! The feathers look nicely shaped, even, and at the right angles. The one thing I’d say is, make sure you leave enough space at the back of the shaft, you’ve got these very near the end, and by the time you’ve cut the nock (the groove the bowstring sits in) there’s not going to be enough space for your fingers on the bowstring if you have then near the nocking point.
I intend to trim the feathers a bit but I didn’t have scissors with me and didn’t want to attempt it with a knife.
I made arrows a long time ago using dowels from the hardware store so they would be straight. Boy did they not fly straight haha. It’s an art form you practice to get good at it. Your aesthetics beats mine right off the bat.
Looks pretty good. Used to do a fair bit of archery, but my arrows were still made with modern tools/glues. Going fully primitive self made tools is certainly appealing until you see one break and think at all that work it took to make.
Yeah it’s quite a bit of work. I don’t think I’d have the heart to actually shoot this even if I did have a bow. I put way too much effort into it. They recommend making these in batches of 5 if you’re actually intending to use them too. This is more of a proof of concept.
Agree that you want batches.
If you are interested in using them you may want to look up Dutch arrows, it’s an arrow you can throw with a bit of string.
Only thrown them once before, I would like to try stuff like that again but I don’t really have the space to do it and suspect it would be illegal to use on public land here in the UK.
Atlatls are another fun one, bigger though. More of a javelin.
I’ve been getting into slingling a bit. It’s wildly inaccurate but you can reach impressive distances and it packs quite the punch.
That’s sick, and looks great. (Though I have no experience fletching arrows)
You can make a bow out of nearly anything, if you want to make a durable and high performance bow, that’s a different story.
But start cheap and easy.
I like this channel a lot because he removes a lot of the mystery and prestige from being a bowyer. https://youtu.be/PAFadJJFwsE?is=NC7y8r4zVlE1hmQK