ABH — you are welcome here and as a beginning trad archer may want to look back across recent threads on the Trailhead forum, which deals with start-up topics. The cock feather goes out (except when correcting for specific rare problems, which we won’t confuse issues with now). Most shelf-shooters (and many custom trad bowyers today) leave a small opening between the shelf (bottom) pad and the window pad, where they meat, so that the lower inside feather has that tiny space to pass through and doesn’t have to fold down to tight. That’s what I go for when fletching arrows, and what you can control by adjusting the angle of the arrow nock — the cock feather should be high enough to just clear the shelf, with the “5 o’clock” feather passing through the corner notch. Hope I didn’t confuse you. Others can say it better and a picture would say it really good. ttf
