Fletching, Molting and Shedding

Snoozy cat

This past week I had a pet in every sun patch in the house. Before that day, we had a total of 4 sunny days - Jan and Feb combined.  We had a foot of snow yesterday to make up for it. No wonder everyone here is getting spring fever in the Great White North. Loving the extra daylight, but not the cat and dog hair everywhere as a result.  Yecch.

So, have new arrows and have been torturing them with the clicker. Needed to replace some fletching for tomorrow morning, so thought I would give you "glue and go" feather people the how-to on these odd ones. These are high-maintenance fletching. Not sure I like them, but supposedly they are the best to use outside, so will give them a fair shot before I try something else (no pun intended).

Before...

Start by drinking half a pot of coffee. Pull out teeny, skinny double-sided tape, cool new jig and spin vanes. Sort arrows by which ones need the most TLC but are not bent. Peel off old, brittle and broken vanes and scrape off old tape. Discover in the daylight there are markers already on the shafts that I missed the last time. Groovy. Start by fitting knitting needle size clean arrow in jig and applying little lines of tape along barely visible markings. Curse drinking so much coffee. Redo tape. Apply fletch as straight as possible. Consider switching to decaf and possibly buying readers. Roll on black tape around finished fletch, top and bottom. Align nock so new fletch is not sent floating to the floor the first time you use it. Repeat until you run out of arrows.

Fini