Transcription
What's up, guys? Welcome back to Inside Out Precision. Today, finally, we're going to build some arrows, or I should say, fletch some arrows.
I get a lot of questions on this: what jigs, three fletch or four fletch, what vanes, blah blah blah. So I'm gonna go over some pretty crucial things in preparation and choosing your vanes, and then I'm actually gonna fletch a couple arrows and kind of show you my process there.
The first thing is gonna be choosing your vanes. Now, most likely, if it's gonna be kind of a do-it-all arrow, something you're gonna shoot for, you know, 3D shoots, recreational target, and hunt with the same arrow, some of the more common vanes that we use are like these AE Hybrid 23s, AE Pro Maxes, or Max Stealth vanes. By far and away, the most common is the Blazer vein.
Now, choosing the vein really comes down to what you're trying to do. You know, if I'm gonna use a lower profile vein like these Hybrid 23s, I might want to do a four fletch because it's not gonna displace as much air. Since it's lower profile, getting a fourth vein on there is going to create more drag quicker, get that arrow spinning, and help steer it.
If you haven't seen my video on 3V3 fletch versus 4 fletch, hop down our playlist. There should be somewhere down there; it's called "3 Versus 4 Fletch." Kind of watch that to maybe decide which one you like.
But the big thing is the vein prep. So, Boning's and these AE hybrids, any of the hybrid series, need zero vein prep. What I mean by that is I don't need to use a little primer pen or any sort of denatured alcohol or anything on the vein.
Now, any of the Max series, so these are the AE Pro Maxes, I can't focus on that. Any of the Pro Maxes or Max series veins require you to use their primer pen and you have to use a Max Bond glue. Now, I use Max Bond for everything, but for whatever reason, the Max series veins, whatever coating comes on them from the factory, if you try to just put super glue on and stick them on, as soon as they're dried, you can just peel them right off. All the glue sticks to the shaft; nothing sticks to the vein.
Now, if you don't buy one of their little primer pens, what you can use is acetone. Get a little Q-tip, put acetone on one end and denatured alcohol on the other. Run the acetone end down first, then run the denatured alcohol, and then put your glue on and stick it. It should stick pretty well.
That being said, it is not their primer pen. It says very explicitly on the instructions to use the primer pen and use a Max Bond. I can tell you from experience that if you do not follow those with any of the Max series veins from AE, your veins are going to fall off.
Conversely, with the hybrids, it specifically says do not prep the vein at all. I can also tell you from experience that if you use denatured alcohol before putting your glue on the actual vein, or if you use lacquer thinner or something on the vein before you stick it, they will fall off.
So, listen to the instructions. Most veins are going to come with instructions on how to prep either the shaft or the vein.
Now, that kind of covers our veins. When it comes to the shafts, we have a pretty standard procedure here. We have just denatured alcohol, and we will clean the back end of the shaft with denatured alcohol before fletching them. You want to make sure that you get it; you don't want it completely coated and dripping wet. You just want to rub it down, make sure it's clean, and let them dry for, you know, 20 seconds, so there's no actual alcohol left on the shaft.
Some shafts, like Axis arrows, Eastern Axis, they kind of have this gloss on them from the factory. You can take real fine grit sandpaper, and I'll show you what I mean when I fletch one. You can take real fine grit sandpaper and just kind of rough up the back of it. But you're not making any flat sides; you're just kind of roughing it up.
Then you clean it, then you fletch it, and we never have any issues with them falling off. When it comes to glue, like I said, there's a lot of different super glues out there, like Max Bond, Dope Glue, maybe people use Gorilla Glue, super glue. I always use Max Bond if I'm going to be using super glue, which will stick to anything.
You can use, at least with the Boning veins like the Blazers, we sometimes use NPV cement if we're just sticking it to like a Gold Tip or a pure carbon shaft. But NPV cement will not stick to any sort of aluminum. So if you're fletching aluminum arrows or like FMJ aluminum carbon arrows, you can't use NPV; you have to use super glue.
So if you're going to buy one glue to do it all, I would recommend just getting like a Max Bond. It'll stick to anything, whether it's wraps, aluminum, carbon, whatever.
Now that I've kind of given you a brief overview of what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna actually go in the fletching room here, a little arrow den, and I'm gonna set up the camera. I'm gonna try and set it up on the jig so that you can actually kind of see what I'm talking about while I narrate it, and we're gonna build a couple arrows. I'm gonna show you kind of my process.
So give me just a sec to get the camera set up, and we'll get to it.
Okay, so I'm gonna kind of show you what we do for our prep. This is just, this is like an Axis fresh out of the bag. Now, you don't need to do this sanding part, but this is just something that I've always kind of done.
So what I'll do is I just kind of set it on my lap here, take some sandpaper, and I just roll it back and forth real quick as I scuff up the back. Again, I'm not taking any material off; I'm literally just roughing up that kind of glossy coat it comes on.
Then I just take a little bit of denatured alcohol on a rag, and I'm just gonna clean that off really well. You can hear it kind of start to squeak once it's real clean.
So now we're gonna let that dry. I'm gonna set it in my jig here. Now, there are a lot of different jigs out there. I'm using the Bitsenberger for this demonstration.
When you're purchasing your jig, there are a lot of different options. You can do a straight clamp, a right helical clamp, usually a 12-degree right helical clamp, or a left helical clamp.
Now, I know you're thinking 12 degrees sounds like a ton of helical, and it is. But that 12 degrees is over this entire six inches of the clamp. So if I'm shooting a two-inch vein, like a Blazer that I'm going to use here, then it's a third of that helical.
So it's gonna be like only a four-degree helical using something that short. To be honest, it probably equals out to be a little bit less than that because at the bottom of this clamp here, it doesn't really start to twist until about halfway up.
So it's only putting about two, maybe three degrees of helical on that vein, which is pretty much perfect. Now, if you're going to run a straight clamp, meaning there's no helical in the clamp, it's just straight, you need to offset your jig left or right.
I'm gonna show that here in just a second while I'm kind of narrating this. But essentially, if I put a perfectly straight vein on there, it's not going to spin the arrow. It doesn't really do much for you.
That arrow has to spin to have any stability. So if you're going to use a straight clamp, you have to actually set the jig up to where the piece, the clamp goes onto, is angling that vein on the arrow at a couple of degrees.
If you're going to be using a right-hand helical, which we use here, there are a couple alignment marks on this jig that I'm going to show. Basically, I leave the bottom ones completely just matched up so that the center of this jig is right in the center of the shaft.
The top one for a right-hand helical, I run just maybe a sixteenth of an inch to the right of the mark on the jig. So I'm getting just a very slight right offset along with that helical, and it seems to seat very well on the shaft.
Then I get, in my opinion, the perfect amount of helical and offset on there so it spins it, but it's not gonna spin it too fast and cause that pair of shooting.
Now, there are a lot of different kinds of jigs out there. Some of them, in the clamp itself, the arrow is always in the same position. These, you know, I can move this jig around based on the diameter of the arrow.
You want to make sure before you start gluing that you put a vein in your clamp here and then put it on there and make sure that it's seating well so that one side isn't squirting out more than the other.
Most of them, for your standard hunting-sized shafts, pretty much right out of the box, they're gonna be just about right. But if you go with a real big diameter shaft, you may need to move everything to the right or left a little bit to get it to seat right.
Or if it's a real small diameter shaft, kind of the same thing. Otherwise, it might be too far on the outside or inside the center of the shaft. So you need to play around with that and make sure beforehand.
Once you get it seating well, there are all these little lines. Let's see if I can focus on that. All these little lines on the back of the jig here.
We have found that the best one to put them on with a Bitsenberger is the second little line. The reason for that is if I get the fletch or the vein too close to the back of the arrow, lots of times you're going to get contact on your face with it, and that can cause issues.
That being said, the further back the vein is on there, the better it's going to steer. So you want it as far back as possible without getting contact on your face.
Now, everybody's gonna be a little bit different on this based on your anchor point and your draw length and all that. There's nothing wrong with running it on the third or fourth line; it's just gonna push that vein a little further up the arrow.
But it really doesn't make a huge difference in group sizing. So I would start by, if you're using a Bitsenberger or the little Boning jig that looks just like this, start on that second line and build one arrow.
See how it works before you do all 12 like that because once these veins are on there, there's no reusing. You have to strip them off. Oh my gosh, if you have to strip them off, they're not gonna work; they're done.
So now that we have our vein and our clamp, let's talk about gluing. Like I said, I like to use the AE Max Bond. It looks like this. This is a great little super glue; it seems to work well for everything.
The key when you're doing this is you don't want a ton of excess glue, especially with super glue because it's runny. If a bunch squishes out on each side, what's gonna happen is, while it's in the jig here, it's gonna start running down your arrow.
You're gonna get these big ugly glue lines and gobs of glue. So I'm gonna show you what I do to get an even coating that will stick well but not have any excess.
What I like to do, actually focus on this, yep, just like that. Rather than trying to do one even line down the whole thing, I take and I just make like six or seven little dots of glue.
So you can kind of see those on there. Try and get some reflection. There are just six or seven little dots of glue. Then I actually just take the nose of the glue bottle and I just kind of spread them out and get off that excess.
So you should see the entire foot of the vein coated in glue, but it should not be running up and down. If you hold it upside down and you see glue running one way or the other, that's too much glue.
With super glue, less is more to a certain extent. Once I get that on there, you can see how I just have my vein. The foot of the vein isn't all the way up against the jig; there's probably 1/32 of an inch of a vein there.
That's important because I need to be able to push the vein down onto it. I don't want this to hit the shaft and not get that vein seated, and I'm gonna show all that here in a second.
So once that's on there, I put it on my jig, push it right down, and then with super glue, I like to wait about, mmm, probably to be safe, I give it a minute. If you're gonna rush, I mean, you can wait 20 seconds; chances are it's gonna stick just fine.
But give it about a minute, then you're gonna pull that clamp off, rotate to the next position, and do the exact same thing on that.
I know you couldn't really see what I was doing there, so I'm going to set the camera up on the actual jig, show how my clamp and my jig is set up, and then just let you watch me fletch an arrow.
So I'm gonna get the camera set up like that, and we'll build another arrow here.
Okay, so this is the part of the jig that I was talking about. You can move back and forth to the right or left. By loosening this little knob here and turning this, I can move this magnetic portion of the jig here right or left.
You heard me mention earlier that I aligned the bottom jig up evenly. Now, it's hard to see, but there's a little line right here and then a matching line on the jig. So those are even, which puts the vein right in the middle of my shaft.
On top, you can see right here that my jig is slightly offset from the center of the clamp. That gives my clamp a slight offset to go with my right-degree helical.
Now, let's actually fletch this guy.
Okay, so I'm going to take my clamp again. We're gonna put the back of the vein lined up with the second line on the jig there. I'm gonna take my glue, see if you guys can see this a little better.
I'm going to do one, two, three, four, five, six, seven little dots. Take the nose of my glue bottle and just kind of spread that out throughout the foot of the vein, just like that.
Now, you can also see here, and that one thing's actually going in there a little better, you can see that the foot of the vein there is not all the way up against the clamp. There's just a little bit of space there, and that's gonna help me seat really well on the actual arrow.
So we got that there. This goes right on. I kind of put the back of the clamp down first so you can get everybody here. So I put the back of the clamp down first and then kind of roll that vein on there.
That's gonna seat that vein really, really well, just like that. So now we're gonna wait for just a sec, maybe ten seconds or so.
Take that one off, rotate. I always like to give it a little shake to make sure it's in the right spot there. Get my next vein again, second line, a little bit above the footer showing.
We're gonna do our dots. So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Spread it out. See if I can focus on the glue on that so you can see how it's kind of shiny.
So it's coated, but it's not running. I like to kind of hold the arrow to make sure it's not pushing up. Seat the back of it, roll it right on. That's going to sit there.
Okay, so now I'd probably let them sit a little bit longer ideally, but for the sake of the video, we're gonna pull it.
So now you have three, well, three veins with a slight right-hand helical on them, slight offset. They're gonna fly really well.
Now, the last piece of the puzzle is gonna be what we call dobbing or tipping and tailing. So I'm just taking a tiny little bit of glue and putting it right on the back where the vein meets the shaft.
I'm gonna do that for the top and bottom, and let's just make sure that it's not gonna catch on anything and start peeling up or anything like that.
And there you have it. I'm gonna set that one up, let it dry, and do 12 more just like it, or 11 more just like it.
Alright, guys, so if you have any questions or comments on this, feel free to hit me up below. Everything I just showed you for the right-hand helical will literally just be opposite if you have a left-hand helical clamp.
Instead of the offset being to the right of the jig, it'll be slightly to the left. If you have, like I said earlier in the video, if you have a straight clamp, you might need to play with that offset a little bit more.
You're probably gonna need to be on a right-hand jig. The bottom will need to be a little bit left of the center line, and on the top, it'll need to be a little bit right in order to get any spin on your arrow.
But it's a pretty simple concept, honestly. I know it can sound kind of intimidating, but it's really not that hard.
If you're using wraps, you want to make sure that the vein is either right on the seam, where the wrap comes around and overlaps, or you want the vein right on the downhill side of the wrap.
You don't want it right on the overlapping piece. So if, like, this is my seam right here, I would want the vein on this side, not on the overlapping piece.
We've seen it where, over time, if the vein's on that overlapping piece, shot after shot after shot, just that resistance from the vein spinning and pulling on that will cause the wrap to start pulling up.
Wraps are pretty simple to figure out. Lay them down, roll them on your arrow. Not literal rocket science there, but I thought I'd throw that out there just in case you're gonna be putting wraps on your arrows.
Either be on the seam or below the seam, not above the seam.
So, like I said, it's a good time. Everybody's at home, not doing anything. Order yourself some arrows, get yourself a jig, get yourself some vanes, and start building arrows.
You know, whether you're doing 3, 3 fletch, or 4 fletch, the concept remains the same. Remember what I was talking about with the different kinds of vanes.
Read the instructions. See if you need to prep the vein at all. It may say just prep the shaft; it may say prep the vein. You want to make sure that you read that so you don't, you know, get done with a dozen arrows, shoot one of them, and then all your veins just fall off on their own at the target.
That's very frustrating.
So thanks for watching today, guys. Hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. Remember, precision is a decision. Keep them in the middle, and I'll see you on the range.