Self-nocks
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# longbow isn't going to