What would happen?

[mobow]

I know when using left wing feathers you should use a left helical, but what happens if you fletch a left wing feather on a right helical?

[Dubbya]

hello Teammate: Funny you ask, I was wondering the same thing last night so I did it on an old broken arrow. First of all, it didn't fit well at all into the right wing clamp on my bitz jig, it tried to crinkle and crack. Then when I glued it down, it would not go on smoothy at all, the feather was pushing against the curvature of the arrow. It looked like a blind person tried to fletch their first arrow... it was bad.

[mobow]

LMAO!! Now, mine don't look bad at all, I just wonder how they fly?

[Dubbya]

man I don't know. They look like you could shoot yourself in the foot.... literally.

[bigbulls]

If you fletch a feather opposite of the way it is suppose to be fletched it will want to fold down flat and flutter when in flight. This defeats the purpose of a feathers ability to grab the air and remain fully upright when traveling at high speeds. The feathers resist air pressure only in one direction when when fletched helically.

Push on both sides of the feather and you will notice that one side is much more resistant to pressure than the other side.

[Arthur P]

I know when using left wing feathers you should use a left helical, but what happens if you fletch a left wing feather on a right helical?

Time itself would run backwards and begin a catastrophic interstellar gravitational flux that would cause the entire universe to suddenly collapse into a gigantic black hole.

Now... Do you wanna know the truth?[8D]

In the first place, the feathers wouldn't fit the shaft right, as dwd found out. The barbs on the feathers are like velcro and that's what keeps them from laying over. If they were bent against their natural alignment, they wouldn't zip into each other like they should. So, when you shoot, the feathers would splay open and would be noisy as the dickens. They wouldn't stabilize the arrow like they should. Forget accuracy and consistency because your group sizes would be... well, you wouldn't get groups.

Yeah, I did that once a long time ago. A whole dozen arrows. It was the last time I drank tequila while fletching arrows, I guarantee you that.

[mobow]

That's what I thought. Thanks guys. Guess I'll strip 'em and start over. Didn't even realize I was doing it until I had 4 of 'em done. Then it hit me.......[&:]

[DaveC]

Doh!! [8D]