Home Forums Bows and Equipment Making fletches!

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    • sinawalli
        Post count: 222

        My friend just got back from turkey hunting, and he brought me a left and right wing from a turkey. Anyone made there own fletches? Recommend a good tutorial on it? How about a chopper? Thanks!!8)

      • Clay Hayes
        Member
          Post count: 418
        • Stephen Graf
          Moderator
            Post count: 2429

            I’ve done it with the fletching clamp, as Clay demonstrates. It works well, but it’s slow if you have a bunch to do, and I wasn’t able to grind the bases as uniformly and as small as I can with the grinding jig offered by 3Rivers for about $120 bucks or so. I bought mine years ago, so it was a little cheaper.

            Dean Torges has some good tutorials on his website about making fletching, arrows, etc., as well as plans to make the aforementioned grinding jig.

            I don’t sort the feathers as Clay does. But I do just use the first 7 primary feathers. And I am always trying to get as much as I can out of them, so I get as many as 3ea 4″ fletch from a long feather. For me, the thing to watch is where the feather rolls around the quill. I cut the feather off before it rolls around the quill.

            I use the feather choppers that you can get from 3Rivers and others. They work well for me. A feather burner is more traditional and faster. But it is stinkier, and more costly.

            Making fleching is fun, and cost effective over time. I have several friends that usually get 3 or 4 turkeys a year. I get all their wings in exchange for some returned fletchings. Luckily for me, they all use right wing feather users, so I get to keep all the left wing for myself.

            Have Fun!

          • David Petersen
            Member
              Post count: 2749

              Steve (et al) — Do you find fletching made from wild turkey feathers as good as commercial? I made some years ago and the feathers were sort of soft and just didn’t last very long. Goose feathers were even worse. But I don’t rule out my inexperience as the primary fault.

            • Stephen Graf
              Moderator
                Post count: 2429

                Dave,

                You must not have been using the primary feathers. Primary wild turkey feathers are as tough as you can get. They last way better than commercial feathers, and don’t lay down in the rain.

                Determining whether a feather is a primary flight feather can be determined easily by looking at how the feathers lay on the quill. If the feathers are even in height on both sides of the quill, it is not a primary feather. If the feathers are much longer on one side than the other, it is a primary feather.

                Of course, the best way to determine it is to have the wing and pull them off. In Clay’s video, he holds the wing up and touches the feathers as he calls them primary. That was great. The primary’s are the leading feathers on the outside of the wing that give the most lift to the turkey in flight. Thus they are the strongest.

                I get a lot of my feathers just walking around and picking them up. When you pick a feather up, hold it in your right hand. If the short side of the quill is forward, it is a right wing feather. Likewise, hold the feather in your left hand. If the short feathers are in the front, it is a left wing.

                Give it another try Dave. You WILL be impressed with them, I promise.

              • Ben M.
                  Post count: 460

                  I’ll add to this a little. I got a pair of wings once from a guy whose turkey flip flopped like y’all-get-out while it was dying and, man, those feathers didn’t hold up worth a darn as fletching. Other than that one instance, in my experience, wild turkey feathers make fantastic fletching. Maybe the feathers you used were damaged.

                • David Petersen
                  Member
                    Post count: 2749

                    Good info, and thanks. But as few birds as we have around here these days I would have to return to the shotgun to collect feathers, thus missing all the fun of hunting them with a bow. Then I’d have to spend as long cleaning it for cooking as if it were a deer. Then I’d have to eat the sucker. Withal, not worth it. :lol::P But I do like the way they make a wood arrow look … like, real.

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