Main Discussion Area > English Warbow

Fletching and Fletching Jigs in the Viking era

<< < (2/4) > >>

CraigMBeckett:
Sigurd,

Sorry I can add nothing to this but to say that I have never read of or heard of the use of fletching jigs by our forefathers. Like adb I believe that fletching jigs are modern inventions and by that I mean very modern circa 20th C.

Would argue wih regard to Welsh bow as similar bows are known from all over northern Europe so there is little to ascribe its ownership to one nation or another. However the English Bow appears to have been distinguished by its size and weight and was referred to as such in many European texts, in England it was generally referred to as a Hand Bow.

By the way my ancestry contains amongst others both Welsh and English.

Craig.

imar:
I heard Vikings used four fletchings.

For fletching they might have used a piece of leather.

A hole in the middle and four (or three) cuts from the hole.

Start by binding your feathers on the shaft than slide the leather over the feathers, you can bind the feathers around and around now without using glue.

Sounds very authentic to me!


Imar

JackCrafty:
I was part of a re-enactment group as well, years ago.  At that time, I was researching an archer persona from Northern Europe around AD900.  The best information I had was some lore passed down from a friend's family.  They said goose was the preferred feather and the ones for war were often dyed with bright colors (greens, yellows, and reds).  They said that using steam was part of the process of fletching but I'm not sure it was used for anything other than making the feathers look "fresh" or "new".  Maybe the steam also helps to melt the glue, I don't know.

In all references I've seen, the feathers were tied on.  I'm not sure they were all tied in a "spiral" fashion but many were, no doubt.  You would probably encounter as many different ways to tie on the feathers as there were fletchers.

Sigurd:
thankyou very much to everyone for your replies.

This not being an area i claim expertise in at all they have been most informative. The method that I will probably use is the one using the piece of leather as I have god knows how many scraps of the stuff in thick shoe sole weight knocking around the house. The other question I had was regarding glue, I was thinking of using pine pitch resin to glue them on as this is cheap and readily available as it would have been in period, does this sound about right to everyone else or should I be using something else? I was also intending to use linen tread for the bindings on the arrows for much the same reasons.

Also i like the idea of the brightly coloured fletchings  as they might have chucked them in a dye bath when they were dying other things such as clothes and it's possible to get some pretty spectacular reds and oranges with madder. I currently do something slightly similar as well though, I bind a bit of thread just under the nock in different colours in order to tell what my arrows are as a glance, for example green means that the arrow is a rubber blunt for use in re-enactment combat. red on it's own means target sharp, red with yellow means bodkin ect. It's just a way for me to know what they are in the quiver and to help prevent accidents on the field as well


As for the whole Welsh bow/English bow thing I think of it as a Welsh bow because (to my knowledge) the longbow spread to England from Wales  and English medieval armies usually had a significant contingent of Welsh archers. but it's really a discussion for another time based on personal preferences with no definitive answer.

@Jackcrafty : the steam might well fit with my idea of pine pitch resin as you need heat to melt the glue

Scowler:
If you are going to glue down the fletchings Pine Pitch sounds about right.  I like your idea of using different color thread to indicate different arrows types.  I do the same thing except I paint the nock end of the arrow with different colors.  Good luck.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page