Arrow making tips and advice

 

Okay so as many of you know I make a lot of arrows and if truith be known I quite like it. I find the process of making them relaxing a lot of the time. The thing is I tend to make wooden arrows and not many with aluminium or carbon shafts these days since Sharon swapped back from shooting barebow to shooting woods.

Well I’ve been making up some club training arrows in readiness for some new courses we are running in January. They are Mybow Cadets from Merlin Archery and I’ll be posting a review of the arrows in a few months, but in the meantime I thought I’d share this tip. It was one given to me by Steve a fellow Briar Rose club member who is very experienced in shooting barebow and making up such arrows.

When making them I noticed the nock tends to rotate in the shaft, making it a bit tricky at times when mounting them on the fletching jig. Now you could add a drop of glue to secure them, but Steve suggested using cling film. Yes, the stuff that normally covers your supermarket produce.

If you wrap the end of the nock that fits into the shaft with a little film and then insert the nock it provides a tighter fit whilst still allowing some movement for alignment purposes.

The amount required varies but with a little trial and error I found a length of 5 to 6 cm and about 12 mm wide worked best. Wrapped tightly round the end that fits in the shaft and it seems to work pretty well.

Well I hope this helps, let me know how it works for you or if you have any other advice or such fixes. My thanks to Steve for the tip.

Thanks for reading.

Hot-melt glue softening over gas ring

Top Tip when using Hot-Melt glue stick

I thought I would share a quick tip I’ve learnt from using Bohning Ferr-L-Tite Hot Melt Glue Stick.

Hot-Melt comes in a stick of approximately 3 inch / 75mm in length. You heat it up and as it melts you apply it to the arrows pile / point and then insert the point into or onto the shaft depending on the style of point, before the glue sets. It is pretty popular with many archers as due to the low melting point of the glue it is easy to warm it up and remove pile if required.

The problem is as you use the glue stick it gradually gets shorter and shorter, making it harder to hold over the flame. You normally end up holding the stub with a pair of pliers and run the risk of covering them in glue. To overcome this I can came up with a simple trick  of using a long wood screw that I screwed into one end of the glue stick stub to use this as a handle.

Hot-melt glue stub with a long wood screw attached

Hot-melt glue stub with a long wood screw attached

These kept my fingers away from the flame, allowing me to hold the glue securely, as opposed to having to use a pair of pliers. It is a simple tip and I’ve found it works well.

Hot-melt glue softening over gas ring

Hot-melt glue softening over gas ring

One other thing is make sure you don’t melt glue over your cooker as chances are if you do you’ll be in trouble.

I hope you find this of use and thanks for reading.