Hi,
I made this straight fletching jig for $1.50. The arrows work well and it's pretty easy to use. I used left over hard board from reinsulating and semi finishing out our attic closet space. However if that is hard to find for free or cheap my suggestion would be to hit your local sign shop that makes electrical signs. They will have drop pieces of Acryllic that will be perfect. Or a wood sign shop will also have fine MDO in various thicknesses. I clamp mine to a table and go to town with a movie or something.
Material for this one:
cheap $.50 plastic ruler cut in half.
chip Bag clip (Or a pair of metal office clips)
Superglue (gorilla thick)
Quick set glue hardner (or a 5 min epoxy).
piece of 1X3 pine.
Two little square strips the width of the pine board.
Hard board strips 3.5" X 5.25"
four short strips of hard board to make the track with.
spray adhesive or wide format masking tape.
Compas.
Square edge.
I put tape on the inside of both of the uprights and spray adhesived them togeather so that my cuts would all line up. I made a template that Sprayed down to follow but basicaly find the mid point of the uprights and scribe a 5/8" circle. Then two square lines to the back edge that are tangent to the circel. This is the slot for feeding the arrow in. Using a protractor lay out your marks for 120* increments and mark them with straight lines. Number the positions 1-3. 1 will be along the baseline of the circle. also mark a little ve under the circle to hold the arrow. The tip of the V should fall on the cneterline.
cut the slot and the V.
Seperate the two pieces and mark your center line on the inside pieces. This needs to run through the tip of the V's. Measure teh thickness of the ruler after cutting it in half, and gluing your chip clip to it as seen in the pic (mine broke from use so I patched the tab). Lay out two line either side of the inside center marks that are centered on them. These will be for alignmen tracks of the feather clamp. Glue them down with superglue. clamp them so they don't shift or hold them and use the quick set. Do this carefully!
Glue the square stips to the inside bottom the same way. When dry clean it up and glue them to the pine board. I use the feather clam as the spacer. I make it a tad tight then run a coarse sand paper through. that way it clamps things into place and isn't sloppy.
You'll need spacers for the nock ends which are also dial indicators. For self nocks I just use a straight piece of the hard board that once sanded a tad fits then nicely. For glue on nocks I cut an arch to give me more space for fletching and to get the nock clear of the "V" so the arrow sits straight. 5/8" deep does it.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Shown below is my $1.50 (dollar store cost of ruler and chip clip) fletchign jig. The arrows fly well. Two bamboo shafted arrows are also shown that I did on it. The dial indicators are in the nocks. I think I can convert my template to a JPG file and post it but we have guests coming and I need to get cooking. I can also email it as a PDF if someone is interested. Then just print, stick and cut.
I cut the base 10" long.
