Saturday, February 18, 2012

Feather Splicing...on a rainy day

There I was, faced with hurricane force winds, torrential downpours and eminent flooding.  I decided the best thing to do would be to break out the feather splicing!  This is a difficult process for beginners (trust me I am one) but it is rewarding to make a few decent looking feathers.




Basically you peel off membrane and feather to expose the quill.  The white and black on these feathers are chopped into sections and glued onto the quill of the blue feather.  It is a very delicate and exacting process and I am far from achieving suitable results, but you have to start somewhere.   I think dad would say,
"You don't have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great."


This is the end result of trial and error and 36 full length feathers to cut up.  I have to get a feather chopper to "punch" a feather out of the these.  Then I will paint some arrows to match the fletching.
Buffalo Field Archery is putting on a 3D tournament tommorrow, hopefully the arrow will fly true and I can improve on my score.  Thanks!