Hey BT - 4 vs 3 - Benefit?

[azslim]

Okay BT, time to educate me. I consider myself a novice still, been shooting compounds for the last 3 years and am still learning about working on my own gear, tuning, tweaking, etc. I will admit that I don't understand everything I know about it yet.

What does 4 fletchings provide over 3? I am assuming increased stability, anything else?

Have you chrono'd to see if there is any speed degradation?

What are some potential problems with 4 vs 3. My first thought is clearance. I am partial to the 2" Blazers. To my eyeballs they seemed to get good stabilization and my chrono tells me they are faster than 4" fletches. But I could see clearance being an issue since they are 1/8" taller.

I could just strip a shaft and fletch it up myself and put up my gear and see for myself on these questions, but I thought you may be able to provide insight into something I didn't think of.

[BT]

azslim said:

What does 4 fletchings provide over 3? I am assuming increased stability, anything else?

Yes....
The fact that you do not have to index your arrow to the rest.
This is a very good thing when you have to keep your eye's on the prize before you.

Some people say that they can do the same thing with the raised portion of some nocks (the indexer) but I say that you are far calmer that the average if you can remember to do that rather than looking in the heat of the moment

Also....the 4 fletch allows a shooter to use lower profile and /or shorter fletching while maintaining the same amount of surface area as a three fletch arrow.

There is a speed reduction but it is minimal and I use feathers so I gain alot more than I lose compared to vanes

There is also the fact that 4 fletch is straight and allows me to do perfect field repairs as opposed to sloppy repairs on helical or off set fletch patterns.

I can also lose one feather and still shoot my arrow with confidence by stripping off the opposing feather whereas if I lost one with a three fletch pattern the arrow would be unusably.

What are some potential problems with 4 vs 3. My first thought is clearance. I am partial to the 2" Blazers. To my eyeballs they seemed to get good stabilization and my chrono tells me they are faster than 4" fletches. But I could see clearance being an issue since they are 1/8" taller.

When using feathers there are no potential problems....only potential solutions

If you now use the 2" blazers you could fletch with the 1.5" instead and shoot the fletch in a saw buck pattern where the fletches face the rest in a 5-11-2-4 O'clock fashion.
In this way the clearance would be better than you have now.
Of course this assumes that you shoot a fall away.
You could shoot the 1.5 in a 6-9-12-3 pattern and have the same clearance I believe




great question

[azslim]

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I pulled my bow out yesterday and flung a few shafts. I also looked closely at how I had the fletching set now for clearance and how a 4 fletch shaft would ride. I think it is time to strip a couple shafts and put some things to the test. Chrono the speed and see how they work at 50 & 60 yds, that type of thing. When I finally get around to doing this I will post the results.

I have a friend here that helps me with my questions and gear, he's the reason I gave Blazers a try in the first place. Anyway, when he was testing them he compared feathers to Blazers and found the real significance between them was with long distance shots. The Blazers actually had less drop at 60 yds than the feathers did. It will be interesting to see what the additional fletch does.

[BT]

If you fletch straight on the 4 vanes you shouldn't see a difference as compared to an offset of 2 degree's

[CopperHead]

BT you have probably already answered this somewhere but what flecthing jig do you use for the four fletching? And what feathers do you use or do you cut your own?

[michihunter]

I've used all types of fletch configurations and continue to always go back to a 3 fletch arrangement. No significant reason other than a personal preference. And as far as indexing goes, I always place my arrows in my quiver so that I can readily grab the arrow and it is indexed already. Not hard to do really as long as you grab the arrow out of the quiver in the same manner time after time.

[BT]

harveycj said:

BT you have probably already answered this somewhere but what fletching jig do you use for the four fletching? And what feathers do you use or do you cut your own?

I use gateway feathers and sometimes trueflight and I have always used a grayling jig with straight clamps.

The grayling is the best value out there

[azslim]

Since I started this thought I would throw in some info. I spent the morning weighing vanes that I currently have to come up with an avg weight & high/low weights. I weighed 15 vanes per type on my RCBS beam scale. The Blazers were the most consistant with the smallest High/low range.

2" Blazers, 3 diff colors so 3 diff lots
Avg 5.85 gr 5.5 low 6.1 high

4" Bohning Plastic, 2 diff colors
Avg 9.79 9.1 low 10.3 high

4" Gateway Feathers, 2 diff colors
Avg 3.52 2.6 low 4.0 high

5" Feathers, 2 diff colors - no idea who made, I use on my cedar shafts
Avg 3.73 3.1 low 4.2 high