Arrows!

This morning, I learned how to make arrows! It was really quite interesting. You start with a shaft, which basically looks like a short (relatively) dowel. You have to measure it, as precisely as possible, and mark the centre. Then you have to balance the shaft on a knife, just where you made the mark and figure out which end is heavier. You mark that end with a P (for punta, or point), then you mark the grain because the nock has to be perpendicular to the grain. After that, you have to measure how long your arrows have to be, without the point, (we used one of my old ones as a measure). You also have to know how far into the nock the shaft has to go (there is a special tool for measuring this).
You saw off the extra wood, and sharpen the end for the nock. You proceed to slightly sharpen the end for the point as well, but not all the way. You use an arrow sharpener for this. Using a special glue, you glue on the nocks and the points. The points have to be screwed on a bit so that they stay on. Then you let them dry for a couple of minutes. After they're dry, you have to put on the feathers. To do this, you use the niftiest tool of all. This is the best picture I can find.

 The clamp holds the feather, you line the feather up with the measurements on the side of the clamp, the clamp has some magnets which put it in the right spot, and it has a mechanism that turns the arrow the right amount between feathers. You have to put some glue on the feathers to hold them on, of course, and you use the clamp to put them on straight. 

Then you put a little sticker over the very end of the feathers (to make the next step easier). Finally, you have to wrap string around the ends of the feathers, to keep them from coming off, and glue over the string. 

So in conclusion, making arrows is awesome. Also there are all sorts of ways to make arrows that go better, but they aren't worth the extra work unless you are really good at archery. By the way, I only made the most basic arrows possible. 

Ciao,

Florence