Primitive Progression

Some say making arrows is up there with making bows in difficulty.  I don't agree with that but there is a lot of work and understanding involved in making a good arrow.  You have three main components to an arrow; arrowhead, shaft, and fletching.  Attaching the point and straightening the shaft are pretty straight forward but the fletching determines most of the flight of the arrow.  If you fletch it wrong your arrow will fly real wonky but if everything is symmetrical it will fly true and straight.

The eastern two fletch is the style that natives in eastern North America used and this was something that I wanted replicate.  I had tried many times before to fletch arrows like this but I always ran into issues when I tried the methods that were shown online.  These methods often involved splitting the feather and grinding it down evenly.  Sure that's easy if you have a belt sander but I'm not interested in using electricity to make something from the stone age.  That doesn't make sense to me.  Anyway, I knew natives were doing this a thousand years ago but I didn't have an exact replica in front of me so I had to figure it out on my own. 

I left the eastern two fletch alone for a while and experimented with other types of two fletch for a while then came back to it after a friend encouraged me to do so.  I tried different things with where I attached the sinew in the front but it wasn't turning out how I wanted it to.  It finally clicked though.  Why grind the vane down and make it flimsy?  Just leave the feather almost whole and flatten the vane where it attaches to the shaft in the front.  This was so simple!  I've never seen anyone else do this and when I figured it out I was baffled that I didn't figure this out earlier.  Anyway, above is the how-to video in case you're interested in making your own eastern two fletch arrows.