Fletching help

[JW_Halverson]

For years now I have been looking at all your arrows with envy and worse, so I am going to do some of those "spliced" fletchings.  I have purchased good quality fletches and cut them to the sizes needed, but when I glue them on the shafts the "blends" are often sticking up off the arrow at such radically different angles perpendicular to the shaft that I cannot get the vanes of the feathers to 'zip' together. 

What am I doing wrong, how can I correct this?

[sailordad]

pics please
easier to see what your talking about

[stringstretcher]

One thing that helped me was, after cutting the spices and putting them in the jig, I ran the quill down on a flat piece of metal that had sandpaper on it.  What it did was get the two or three quill bottoms to the same flatness/angle and that allowed them to align better. Once glued, take your fingers, starting at the quill and get the feathers to blend together.

[Tom Leemans]

Where your splice comes from on the donor feather is an important part of a good looking splice. You want the quills to lay the same as the ones you take from the main feather.

Question, are you taking your donor (splice) feather down to the membrane and gluing it in, or are you butting the pieces together?

[JW_Halverson]

I'm using whole feathers purchased from 3R, cut to length(s), without any further sanding of the rachis (center stem of the feather).

[okiecountryboy]

I only use turkey feathers. Use hide glue to put them on shaft one at a time. Before they are completely dry tie them down with sinew onfront end. Reposition if necessary. Then tie back reposition again if necessary. Let dry. The trick is turkey tail feathers. One turkey can give you enough feathers to fill many a quiver...

[aero86]

or, you can buy 100 feathers and a chopper like me and wonder how your going to process them all!!

[Tom Leemans]

There's a nice spilce-a-long on the how to section over on the other trad site.

[Pat B]

I read 3 different methods on splicing and 2 of them were like brain surgery to me. The third one basically said to measure, cut and attach and for me that worked.
 One thing I found is that in the mating areas, the barbs(hairy things) have to be the same size and stiffness for the splice to come out right. I found I could get one forward piece(longer piece) from a full length feather and 3, 1" back pieces from one full length feather.  I was using a 5 1/2" high profile shield cut with a 1" splice at the rear.  That is the only type of splice I did. Basically I would measure the front section and cut it out, then measure the rear piece and cut it out. Then I put the two together. If the pieces match well enough the barbs from both pieces would mate and hold the splice together. I clamped it in the fletching clamp, added glue like usual and attached it to the shaft.

[JW_Halverson]

I think my problem lies with the various cuts I have made.  I think I am trying to blend thin barbs from the front of one feather with thicker barbs from further back on another feather.  Maybe I should just junk the whole process for now until I can make it to Pappy's for one of the bigger events!  By junk the process, I mean stuff it all into a box and shelve it....be danged if I ever throw away anything that may even come close to being usefull in the future!