Blackie — These spirals are difficult! For myself, I’ve had more trouble keeping the front down than the back. I know little about this compared to others with far greater experience, but since I”m first to comment — Consider that flu-flu’s are usually shot at birds or other targets where we’re sort of saying, “This is a really really risky shot and I want to take it no matter if I never see this arrow again.” So, most often we use expendable arrows. Which leads into me having no problem taking a couple of wraps with dental floss around both front and back of the feather spiral. I mean, these aren’t the most accurate arrows in the world so it’s no big deal. 😆

Another alternative is to use, say, 5″ lengths of uncut feathers, 3 to 6 and basically straight so that we can use our normal fletching jigs. They serve the same basic flu-flu purpose of slowing air-shot arrows down so that maybe we can find them.

That’s all I have to offer. Maybe you should post this in the bow and arrow making forum as well?

I’m looking forward to hearing other suggestions and your own solutions. Dave

I don’t like the idea of a fluflu. It just doesn’t make since to slow down your shaft when shooting at something moving so fast. They sure help to cut arrow loss but, as an unintended side effect, they also cut birds hit. With a slower shaft there is much more room for error. I’d argue for a faster shaft if your objective is to actually hit something flying through the air.

But, if you really want a fluflu, Dave’s suggestion is a great one. I usually wrap all my fletchings front and back with sinew.

ch

Daves and Clays suggestion is definatly where it is at. However, I would honestly suggest that you ditch the spiral wrap flu flu’s, they are too slow. With the 4″ 4 fletch ones I am just as acurate as I am with regular arrows. And I know exactly what they do, how far they go, and how accurate they are, just check out my squirrel video, lol. I would say that if you are hunting ducks, and definatly geese that you should use a broadhead. If you are dareing to use a regular arrow, then a regular small game head would be fine . . . I think?

As far as hunting anything smaller than a pheasant, which I dont know if anyone else is as crazy as I am, but when I attempt to hit a dove, I use between a judo and a kondor with a 4″ 4 fletching flu flu on a Beeman ICS bowhunter shaft. That is the ticket. And I know from experience that if you are worried about loosing arrows, just do what I do, and use bright feathers, the orange is great, except for about a week in october, when everything seems to be orange. And as far as they go is about 70 yards, and that is with my 70# martin! So I hope my response helps! And good luck!

If I do make a spiral wrap, I whip the ends with a little thread, usually use a “modified Hybrid” feather, take about a 6″ full feather, using a straight fletcher, glue about the front 4″ on staright, leave the back loose, when the front sets up, glue and pull the tail end into an off set.Put on 3 feathers like this. This set up gets off the bow fast and starts spinning at about 30 yards to slow the shaft, you don’t sacrifice arrow speed.

To answer the original question, you can keep the ends of the spiraled fletch down by using thread or mono line wrapped around the ends, or you can put a drop of glue there just like any feather fletch. If you sand off most of the pithy part of the base you will find that the ends are less prone to come up.

As for not liking flu flu’s because they cut down on speed and therefore may cut down on hits, I have found a compromise that works well for me. The spiral wrapping style serves as an air brake and works really well to slow down the arrow. Because of this I have found that you can trim the full length feather down by half, or even more if you want, which makes the arrow fly better and doesn’t slow it down as much in the first 20-30 yards. All arrows start to loose energy faster past this distance and the spiral fletch will speed the lose of energy causing the arrow to basically drop out of the sky past that distance. You can affect how far your arrow goes before it starts to slow down by trimming the spiral fletch closer and closer to the shaft until you get what you want.

This fine tuning is important because you still want to have sufficient energy when the arrow hits its target to do the job. So, if you are shooting at a bird or squirrel at 20 yards you want your arrow to slow down/fall from the sky at around 30 or 40 yards.

Hope this helps.

Snakeeater