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 feel good.

Once I master this, I'm going to try fletching with some raw turkey feathers.  Then I'll try making my own shafts from chokecherry shoots.  That's a ways off yet, but the direction I'm going.  Hopefully by then, I'll be able to actually hit something with this new bow of mine.

Edit:  My second nock is a lot better, and went a lot faster.  Progress!

Edit:  Here are some I made with home-processed turkey feathers, sitka spruce shafts, self-nocks wrapped with silk, and "stained" by rubbing them with dandelion flowers.  

(It takes about six blossoms per shaft to arrive at this depth of yellow.  Sometimes it's good to have a nine-year old daughter)




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