# Feather Splice Question



## recurvedbj (Mar 2, 2004)

*Feather Splice*

I played around with splicing for awhile last year. It seems I could only get 1/4" to work. Used three colors in the splice. There is alot to consider to get the splices to match, even if you burn the feathers, in my opinion is the best way to do the job. There is the angle in which you cut the quill, where you take your pieces from the feather even the curve around the birds body, the age or size of the feathers. A very difficult task for me. I would cut a mass of feathers and try and match them before glueing to the shaft. Still very difficult.


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## Michigander (Jul 31, 2002)

Good question. 
I've seen some very professional looking splices in the area of an eighth inch.(not much point in going smaller since they aren't easily visable after that). The above poster is corrct. It is a whole lot easier if you have feathers that are comparable when matching up cuts. Most of them still need trimming no matter how close they are. 
Myself, I normally don't go much smaller than a half or 3/4". Not because it's any harder, but because I like the look of a larger splice. I use splicing mostly to determine cock or hen fletches, and they need to be easily visable for that reason. Split color dips are another example of a good use for larger cuts, or half splices.
When building your own ultimate set of arrows, I understand why you'd want to get into a lot of detail. It sounds like you already know the answer to your question. It just depends on how much time and detail you want to put into them as to how small you can get. All of us seem to be different in the look that we like to produce.
There are some pics of some really nice feathers at the Tru-Flite Feathers web page which are well worth looking at. Some of those guys must have hours and hours into cutting feathers alone. There are a lot of different technics in feather splicing. None of them are very fast, but they all turn out well if the arrowsmith takes his time at it.
Have fun with it.
JMO,
Jerry


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## StevenB-NC (Aug 27, 2006)

*1/8 is the way to go!*

I decided to do a half-dozen bare shafts just to experiment and get a feel for the splicing before tackling the overall design I was considering. I figured it would be best to try a few without any cresting, so that any errors could be easily corrected without the added aggravation of having to re-crest the whole shaft due to the learnig curve of the splicing. Having done this little fun experiment, I can see better what you guys were saying about getting a set of 'matching' feathers before doing the splice. I canNOT imagine attempting this without having a good number of feathers in all the needed colors just for matching and sorting/culling purposes. The smallest successful splice achieved was 1/16th, but it really didn't look too attractive from both sides of the fletch. I'd concour with the 1/8th being the smallest practical...ESPECIALLY on a helical (  ) fletch. Any smaller and the twist kept wanting to seperate the splice. Thanks for the feedback and here is a quick pic of the final product:










Thanks again!
Steven


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## Corsair (Nov 21, 2005)

Steven
Beautiful job. I don't know if I have the skills to do somoething like that but I'd really like to.

Well done!!


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## TradTech (May 9, 2005)

The most efficent way to splice that I've found is to strip the feather from the quill with a razor. There's no need to fight trying to match quills.

It's simple to do and does take some practice and patience.

Troy Breeding taught me how after I had him splice some of my natural barred from a bird I killed earlier.

Simply mark the feather that you'll be fletching to your shaft. Take a razor and hold it as close to the quill as possible applying medium pressure. Follow the cut to the mark on the quill. Break the feather at the barb.

Next do the same thing to the other feather that you want to marry to the one which will be fletched. Slide the "loose" feather onto the fletch feather after applying a thing line of fletchtite to the quill. Put the feather in a "straight" clamp. Make sure the clamp does not touch the glue line. Wait for the glue to dry. Cut the feather to length. Fletch the arrow and use a feather burner to burn your shield. 

I like to match my splice to one of the accent stripes on my crest. Sometimes multiple splices if I really wanted to get involved.:darkbeer:


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## Pdwight (Nov 26, 2009)

This fascinates me, I have ordered some shafts to build some arrows and I want to try this. Are you guys doing this with truflight feathers cut and ready to glue on or is it with full feathers and then cut them down....I want to know more.

Thanks
Dwight


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