I thought for a minute there was a flury on TB!!! LOL 🙂

This is the place to get those answers!

I’ll be interested to see if I’m right, but either you use right wing or left wing FEATHERS on arrows…

I use left wing and also a “straight clamp” with a slight left offset.

Regardless, the wing orientation of the feather imparts some spin, Or so I’ve come to believe.

You typed 2 conflicting words: straight 5inch feather vanes

Are they feathers or vanes? If feathers, they come off a right wing or left wing and have a natural curvature accordingly.

Since I use left wing feathers fletched straight, I use left bevel heads. Leave a lovely S shape wound channel.

See if anyone contradicts that or enlightens this old pfart!:D

Doc’s right – you want to match the ‘wing’ orientation of the feathers you are using with the bevel, e.g. – left wing, left bevel.

Does it make any difference if they are straight? Possibly yes, possibly no. It really depends on a lot of factors that can generally only be assessed by seeing how your arrows fly. Personally, I straight fletch my feathers entirely – no offset, no helical, and they fly great and stable, but your mileage may differ.

As Doc said, even if they are straight, a feather still has some natural curvature to it.

Wish I could be more helpful than that!

1shot wrote: The feather fleching is straight, there is no curve to them, they are the “fake ones”…

So then they are vanes, and not feathers? If so, you may have a hard time shooting off the shelf with plastic vanes, since they don’t compress the way feathers do. You’ll likely need an elevated rest to shoot an arrow with vanes from a trad bow. Or, re-fletch them.

Smithhammer wrote: [quote=1shot]The feather fleching is straight, there is no curve to them, they are the “fake ones”…

So then they are vanes, and not feathers?

So far, this has been a vocabulary exchange. I don’t think we can help Onesey if we’re not sure what he’s fletched with.

“Fake” could be either as you say, Smithy, vanes or those dyed “fake” commercial feathers.

I tend to lean with Smithhammer on this and “ass-u-me” they are vanes, but you’ve not mentioned that in other posts, so I’m going to sit this one out and watch till we have our nomenclature clarified.

If Feathers, with barbels on them, they come from right or left wing of a bird and will spin one way or another, straight fletched or not.

If indeed, Vanes, then you got me, Pard! Been way too long since I’ve seen anything with them, albeit, I once had some really soft “vanes” that shot off the shelf ok, they just didn’t hold up long shooting off the shelf!

If I remember from working in the archery shop, most vanes were more stiff which is why they kicked off the shelf and required some sort of an elevated rest.

Be fun to see what shakes out as this clarifies… Feathers have those barbels on them, and vanes are solid plastic… kapish? Which ya got, Bro??? :?:shock:

Hubba, Huba, David! 8)

Synthetic Feathers???

I had to Google that un! Results led me to another site where there was a big fanfare about the same term…seems some guys had them 20 yrs ago that looked like feathers, but the barbles were made of plastic, not like vanes.

Sounded like toothbrush fibers or something.

You post great pics…how about eduumcatin some of us heathens on these “synthetic feathers” with pics? Source?

I gotta see this now! I’m totally cornfuddled!:shock:

OK…so I get this email with David’s (1shot) reply, so I click and start replying but MY comments preceed his post!

How’d that happen???

This is how I tell left/right wing on regular feathers. Do your synthetics have a catch lip like this?

Jim

A GLORIOUS DAY, WE EXCELLED!!!!!