Did not want to hijack the other fellas thread, but why the feathers??? I shot the 5" feathers thru the mid 80's into the 90's. And thought they was awesome. but since going to the vanes I have not looked back. I hated them when they got wet and the vanes are a little quieter. And I have no problem holden softball size groups @ 50 yds. and shoot mid 290's indoor. just seems like it would not be worth the trouble. Now if shooting a long bow or recurve I would be shooting them. just curious?????????????
Feathers create more drag. That in turn adds stability. Those are the pros. The cons are that more drag = more friction = slower arrow speed Feathers are not near as sturdy as plastic vanes. Lastly, as you mentioned the noise and rain.
Feathers are awful. Particularly 4" left wing feathers. Yellow and orange are the worst. If you have any, you should send them to me and I'll dispose of them for you. I'm looking out for you! I'll take other colors too. But yellow and orange.. in particular.
Rain has no effect on feathers. Zero. If a feather is damaged the arrow still flys just fine. Feathers are much, much more forgiving than plastic when contacting something. Feathers are no noisier than any other fletch. Feathers are lighter than vanes and help the FOC, even if only a little. The surface area creates drag and feathers can have more or less surface area than plastic vanes, thus they can have more or less drag. Feathers are usually fletched in a helical fashion and this promotes more drag but you can do the same thing with 4" plastic vanes. I can't imagine why there is any trouble with feathers. I use fletch tape and can have feathers on an arrow in about 3 minutes and shoot the arrow right away. Can't do that with glue and plastic. When I remove a damaged fletch I just pull it off and rub off any residual fletch tape with my thumb, wipe down with denatured alcohol and am ready to refletch. Can't do that with plastic and glue. IMO, glue and plastic is much more trouble than tape and feathers, by a long shot.
As Bruce said on my practice arrows, they can be all torn up and still fly great. Then I just re fletch them right before the season starts. It works great. I love my feathers. I see no reason to use anything else. To each is own though.
I've written ad nauseum over the years about how much better feathers are than vanes, in the same vein as my buddy Bruce just did. These days... I agree with Christine. I'm on her bandwagon: feathers suck! If you have any RIGHT WING 4" feathers that you need to get rid of... send me a PM. I'll gladly let you know how to dispose of them, since she's going to help you dispose of the left wing ones...
Some awesome post, I actually threw away several rw bags of orange and yellow feathers a few years ago. they was 5" though. I had a beautiful set of arrows built in the early 80's really crested and awesome barred feathers.
