And learned a good bit:
1)Always sand well before staining.
2)Measure thrice and cut once (I'm a little more accident prone...)
3)Double check your cock feather location.
3)Just because it's not what you had in mind doesn't mean it's bad.
4)Wipe-on poly is your friend.
5)After putting glue on your fletching is not the time to realize you forgot to put the nock on the arrow.
6)Fingers are excellent surfaces for stain, sharpie and glue.
7)The wife seems to think door knobs, jams, and faucet handles are less excellent surfaces for the previously mentioned items.
8)When all else fails, remember you could be working instead.
These first two are Matt G's poplar shafts which I poorly stained red and lightly spray-painted black when the black stain for the nock end didn't work. Not too pretty, but they shoot well and I like them.
This is an stumper experiment with craft-store feathers, spiral fletching and hand-made hickory dowel. Fun, but a lot more work.