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some pics and thoughts of home made arrows

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Josh:
very resourceful.. There's nothing wrong with walking your own path... that is what led most of us to this hobby in the first place.  I think your arrows are cool and with a little refinement to make them tougher might just start a trend.  Nice going man!  :)

Orkraider:
Thanks!  As far as the duct tape fletching goes, I've been trying a few different approaches to fletching.   

The first try was some thin craft foam cut into nice parabolic vanes. Looked pretty as heck, the colors were Awesome, but they tore easily where the glue met the shaft. 

Second attempt was store bought vanes.   Super glued to the shaft. Again, uber pretty; but, as I'm sure everyone else already knew, not a good fit when yer shooting off your hand on a wood bow. 

Third attempt: Clear packing tape 2 fletch. This worked great. It was light, way more durable than I expected, didn't bounce off my hand when I shot.  Putting this on as 2 fletch was simple; going to 3 fletches with the correct amount of helical twist was a whole different critter, which led me to:

Fourth attempt: making a device that would allow me to use my huuuge stash of clear packing tape to make 3 fletched helically twisted vanes. After a lot of time and experimentation, I came up with a jig that worked. This was a lot of fun; I had to design the parts in a 3d modeling program to figure out how to cut the wood to make it work.  This is what I'll be using for my final spec for arrows Until I find a source for feathers that is as close to free as possible.

Fifth attempt: duct tape 2 fletch. For me, it has all the advantages of the other stuff I tried, but it's way faster to apply than the packing tape.  Creates a little more drag, but reducing the size of the vane eliminated that as an issue, while still giving me enough stability for my purposes.  This is what I'll be using for the rest of my testing phase until I get to the point where I'm pretty sure it's the fletching that's affecting my groupings.

My trip to the range today to test out this set of arrows was actually a watershed moment for me.  This was the first time I was at the range with such a large quantity of arrows what were starting to get close to what I wanted.  Being able to shoot a bunch of time in a row really let me work on my form.  I had one round where all 18 arrows hit within a foot of center at 20 yards. I'm pretty new to the sport, so for me, that was a big deal; it also let me know that my accuracy in shooting was improving enough that I have to keep making refinements to my arrows. 

Now that I finally have my camera working, I'll be posting more pics of all my stuff as I go through this process. 

Notice that I'm getting a little wordy here; Vodka Lemonade is Awesome! =) 

Cheers!

Cromm:
Great work and as you say enjoy yourself.

NTD:
The idea is neat.  Have you thought about maybe trying sinew to hold the wire in place.  It'd look nicer and may be less weight, less drag, and possibly a tighter hold.  Maybe...

Orkraider:
I've thought about that, and I'm actually going to be doing that, or something very similar. 

The second pic I posted had the ends of the wire secured to the shaft with a thread wrapping that was covered in glue. 

This worked great, and it looks waaaay better than the other things I tried; this is what I'm going to be doing once I come up with a final design for my arrows.

I made up this batch of 18 to test a few things; I wanted to see what kind of effect having a properly weighted head would have, as well as finally cutting the shafts to the correct liength for my draw.  I also wanted to do some extensive testing of the durability of the heads before I decide on this approach for the final spec.

It turns out the effect was huge; even with the very rough approach to the rest of it, and the complete lack of slick aerodynamics, I was getting the tightest groupings I've had so far.

For the heads, the final design will be very much like in the second picture; I'm going to be cutting a groove into the shaft almost exactly like in that pic.  The full width of the wire will be sticking out to the sides for the first inch or so, then will be recessed into the shaft, ending with the with the surface of the wire flush with the surface of the shaft. 

For the durability test I was doing, I didn't cut the recessed groove; this meant that I had to use massive quantities of duct tape to smooth over the end of the wire. Otherwise, when I draw back, the ends of the wire bump into either my hand or the back of the bow.

I've got 3 things planned for today; Finally going to build a spine tester; Going to pick up a couple dozen 3/8 " shafts and mess with barrel tapering jigs; and I'm going to work on designing a jig to let me quickly and easily cut the type of recessed groove I need in the side of the shaft with my angle grinder. 

I'll be posting pics as I go. =)

Cheers

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