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Showing posts from December, 2018

Self-nocks

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I have been learning a lot of new skills lately:  Nixtamalizing corn from the garden, sewing, leatherworking, and this one:  Building arrows from scratch.  This is a store-bought sitka spruce shaft with store-bought feathers, but it has something I've never tried before:  A self-nock.  That means the little notch that goes on the string is carved into the wood itself, rather than a little piece of plastic glued on the end. I carved it out perpendicular to the grain with 4 mini-hacksaw blades taped together; finished with a 1/8" file and 140 grit sand paper.  Wrapped with silk thread coated in Duco. I am having a devil of a time getting the cuts dead center on the shaft.  I've been practicing on some old, broken POC shafts.  This is the first one I've tried that might actually shoot.  I plan on giving it a try tomorrow once the glue is all cured up.  I hope I've done it right.  I'm guessing an exploding arrow coming out of a 60...