Fletching design

Ray,
I have hunting arrows from India with broadheads and they also had long low fletchings. In five arrows they're were four feathers with an orientation to the nock like a "+" sign. The other had three feathers in the normal Oriental "Y" orientation. They were fletched to within 1 cm of the nock and roughly 14 cm long. The heights of the four fletch are conjectural due to insect damage, but the three fletch were less than 1 cm. This is on 72 cm draw arrows.

On some Chinese arrows I have seen helical fletching, but not on other Oriental arrows.

The lower fletchings were generally related to the superior smoothness of the release from the thumb ring. Not all of us shoot that well, even with our thumbs. My advice is to try out some arrows and increase the fletching height if you have problems.

Flight arrows from Turkey have fletching very like Western fletching, only much smaller and thinner.

Thanks for the insight,

The more I learn about this realm of archery the more I find there is still a whole lot more to learn.

Ray

1. would I be better off using three shorter length, high profile feathers or four longer low profile feathers?

2. Does the hieght of the feather have anything to do with bow clearance when shooting off the right side with a ring? It does not seem to have much effect when shooting across the bow with a western draw, especially when using real feathers and not plastic vanes.

3. Will low profile fletchings stabilize an arrow at such drastically short distances as 15 meters?

4. Does using a helical twist in the fletchings help or hurt when shooting with a thumb ring?

1: It is imprtant to use feathers rather than any plastic material since the fletching will be incontact with the knuckle of the thumb at the time of release. My advice is to go for about 4 inches length. and max height of about 3/8 inch. Remember to allow sufficient clearance between the arrow nock and the rear of the fletching to prevent the forefinger from fouling the fletching when you draw.

2: No. there is little difference in the way that the arrow acts against the grip whether shot (correctly) left or right/Mediterranean or thumb.

3: Yes. My impression is that at short distances, deflection of the arrow in the initial moments after release is more severe with the thumb draw.

4: Helical is no problem.

Steve,

Do you think the larger surface area of having four fletchings rather than three would help with the initial stabilizing?

Ray

Hard to say. I have never seen traditional Asian fletching with four feathers, though... Just one more thing to fall off. :)

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3: Yes. My impression is that at short distances, deflection of the arrow in the initial moments after release is more severe with the thumb draw.

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About two weeks ago I asked about a passage in a recent book, to the effect that perhaps the thumb ring hurt short range accuracy. The consensus was that the passage must be mistaken.

Perhaps the authors of the book had some notion that deflection right after thumb ring release might be severe, so that accuracy might suffer.

The initial deflextion to the right with a thumb draw is paralleled by the same effect to the left with a Mediterranean draw. The difference is noticeable because you adjust unconsciously to whatever style you use most often.

I have shot with my thumb for thirty years and changing to three fingers to test something resulted it shafts going wildy left of where I was aiming. In the end I had to get someone to stand behind me and correct my aim.

This experience led to another experiment where I used a modern righthanded bow to shoot with different methods, all on the same side of the bow and with the same sight position. I drew to the same point of my face to remove variations from the different anchor points of the various styles.

I shot at 15 metres for safety reasons (I had no idea where the arrows would go). The target was paper field target. I set up the sight with the standard three finger release.

The release styles were:

• 1. three fingers with one above the arrow and two below;
  2. three fingers below the arrow;
  3. the two middle fingers below the arrow;
  4. the thumb with a copper archer's ring below the arrow.

The results were that:

• 1. produced a tight group on the centre of the target;
  2. produced a group 10 cm or more below the centre of the target;
  3. produced a group about 10 cm above the centre of the target;
  4. produced a group at the same height as 3. but about the same distance to the right.

Needless to say, I was surprised. The results of 4. were not what I expected. Since there was no support on the left side of the arrow, I thought it would drift to the left. Instead it went the same way as arrows I normally shoot with a thumb ring on the right side of the bow. 2. was also a surprise because I thought it would result in at least as fast an arrow as 1. did. I expected 3. to perform better than three fingers because there is less friction on the string.

This was only a small test with six consecutive arrows in each section. They were the same arrows each time and the draw length was the same too.

Bede,

You may have just unlocked a mystery for me. I have shot with a split finger draw for years back when I shot a compound (Index over and middle and ring under). Since moving to traditional archery I have been shooting the same way and I have gotten used to the same sight picture.

Now that I am trying to use a ring I am having two problems.

1. My arrow slaps the bow when it passes upon release and
2. My arrow goes about 1 meter to the right of where I aim at about 15 meters shooting distance.

I first thought the slap I am hearing on the bow was causing the drift to the right. Now I am wondering if it is just a matter of getting used to a new sight picture. I have moved my sight picture over to the left but only the thickness of the bow.

BTW I am waiting for my new thunb ring to get here so I can see if that is part of the slap problem.

Ray

Buy Adam Swoboda's archery book and it may help.

You may be putting too much twist on the string, or too much pressure with arrow hand's index finger.

Interesting that I was just reading the section of Chinese Archery by someone we know well, where the ancient formula for fletching was 1/5th of the arrow's length, and no taller than the diameter of the arrow.

Forgive me Stephen, I can't remember which manual that was from...

For one of my arrows (33") that would be a 6.6" fletch! Pretty long.

But, considering that it would be 7mm tall, That's not too bad.

[external image] :lol:

Very long fletchings. Probably tail feathers. What culture is this, Chinese?

Stephen commented that he had not seen four fletch on Asian arrows, but it is quite common on arrows from India with heavy heads. Both long low three fletch and four fletch have advantages in hunting arrows. Making the fletch higher, speeds up the corrective effect of the arrows at the cost of arrow speed. This can be very advantageous in hunting where you are not shooting a lot of arrows in a short time so often you can shoot a heavier bow successfully without the errors that creep in with fatigue. In hunting you really want your arrows to enter in line with their trajectory to maximise the impact and penetration. Short high feathers wear out more quickly than longer lower feathers; they may also be more prone to damage related inaccuracy.

Very crude arrows in comparison to the Mughal arrows that have survived, it seems.