Lets talk burners.....I've had one for a couple years now...used it some, but not a lot...
Can you guys share how you go about it when it time to burn your feathers....anything special to your procedure?
My biggest question is....How do you guys prevent the scorching of arrow wraps when burning?
a couple more...
Is it best to rotate kinda fast or slow? I noticed sometimes the feathers seem to fold over before it burns all the way thru.....
Best way to remove the brown edge after burning?
the only thing I can add is.... Do it outside...
Why does it have to be attached to a shaft. i am not familar with the process. I have a chopper, but never use it as I have a great line on feathers. Shawn
Shawn , Im with you ???? Bananas are my fav.... :)
OH Charlie....PLEASE come hep.
That was all I usta do, Now it's ANCHEINT HISTORY. Just purchased a Young bout a month ago. Only to remember how much I had forgotten.
As I recall, you want to go pretty quickly when burning, this requires a VERY hot wire. After the burn I usually steam my fletching and just rub the burnt stuff away. As far as with wraps, can't tell ya yet, Back in the OLDEN days we didn't have them. Didn't seem to bother the cresting as I recall. Being an Ole Gay Guy I Love the way it usta be...... :bigsmyl:
Did you try to go to 3rivers site and watch their video on feather burning
Youngs feather burner (http://www.3riversarchery.com/Product.asp?c=52&s=8&p=36&i=4171)
If your feathers are folding onto themselves, rotate the shaft the other way. Might work, might not. I have used mine for a lot of years, but I specialize in reinventing, not analyzing. I find that when I have a problem with that, I also seem to not have enough heat in the wire. I think a longer wire decreases the heat available. There is more surface area for the heat to bleed off.
I do it inside. :scared:
But I am the wife, and I don't order me out of the kitchen. I will do a big batch outside, but wind will take the heat away from the wire.
I have never used wraps, but have 'browned' the shafts. For scorch marks, move the wire further from the shaft. The wire expands when heated, and you may end up with contact upon using it. A clean wire works best, you may need to take a small knife and scrape the edge of the wire before putting a feather to it. I am not sure, but I think a new wire works better than an old wire for getting good and hot.
Sometimes the 'browning' is smoke stains, and they rub off. The crust on the feathers can be whisked off with a knife blade or a tin can lid, you get the idea. I knock the big stuff off, but if there is just a fine edge, it will wear off quickly with use.
Best results for me are on a smaller, low-profile fletch with a good hot wire. One quick pass and it's done. I usually am doing a 4.5" shield.
Killdeer
Yep, Killy has it right. I turn the shaft into the wire, not up from the bottom.For wraps, you can adjust the wire far enough away to not melt the wrap and you will have a small piece of feather and quill left. I then take an Xacto knife and gently push it's edge straight down onto the quill till you here it "snap" thru. Pop it off with the knife. A lot of the brow you see it actually soot.First time you shoot it the crud left on the fletch will be gone.
My burner was given to me by a man in his mid 70s and the burner was his fathers ! It had a wire on it in a shape I had not seen before. I use it a lot. Real old school. I have a wire bent for nanner and pope and young in addition. I use a lot of natural barred feathers and this tool is just the ticket.The one that was on the burner (old school) is a higher height than most but shorter. I can get 2 from each full length, even the smaller ones.
Killie and Flint have covered it pretty well. The biggest thing is getting it adjusted well. The wire will expand when hot so start about 1/8" from the quill and keep adjusting closer just a bit at a time until you get as close as you dare without burning the quill or shaft. You will want to unplug the unit and let it cool a bit before adjusting as the ribbon clamps can get hot. I've never tried wraps so I don't know how sensitive to heat they are.
Unlike Flint, I prefer to rotate the feather from the bottom up as the waste falls away better for me this way. Clean the waste away after every few arrows. Go too slow and you'll burn the feather too much; too fast and it won't burn evenly. After two arrows you'll have the speed figured pretty well. A small piece of 100 grit works pretty well for cleaning off the crud and you can trim the ends of the fletch with an exacto knife or similar. And put some tape on the "V" of the arrow guide so you don't scratch your shafts.
Here's a pic of some Yellow Jackets I burnt yesterday.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v450/Fletcher610/PBS-2008.jpg)
ladies and gentlemen children of all ages. What I have learned about using a burner.
#1 Adjust the burner before you start (them red ribbons can hurt)
#2 Turn the feather into the ribbon in a steady motion. Sometimes I will only do one feather at a time and make sure everything (old burnt feather) has burned off the ribbon before burning the next.
#3 Get yourself some of that LOW TAC painters masking tape (green or blue stuff) and wrap it around your shaft in front of and behind the feathers where the ribbon will be coming close to he shaft. Tape my burn a little but I haven't had the shafts get damaged from the heat since I started doing this. I've never tried wraps but if the heats not hurting the finish on the wood shafts then it should still work for you.
#4 Smoke Em and enjoy the results. A little water will remove smoke residue on the shafts just rub it with your finger.
In the 3R video they show a P&Y type feather that does not have the burn wire close to the shaft. I try to keep the wire far enough away to keep from burning the shaft and then trim the last bit by hand. Burners are great because the feathers are symetrical to the shaft - not some preset shape. Extra wires are cheap, get some and play around with different shapes.
Lots of good advice here Curt. Fletcher's tips are as close to what I do as any, though.
Your ribbon should burn nice and red. That will solve a lot of problems alone. If the feathers "bend" on contact, it's probably not hot enough.
Does the burner have the little "L" shaped thing on the side... mine didn't and I made one from a piece of 1/8" square stock I got at the hardware store. Makes a lot of difference.
shoot your bow somewhere where it is totally quiet- and see if the shape you made produces a quiet flight of the arrow.
Some designs sound like a rabid hummingbird.
Fletcher, the way I do it the excess feather falls on the wire and smokes even more. Gawd I love the smell of burnt feathers in the morning ! :bigsmyl:
Two questions,
My problem with my burner is that when I look at the wire it isn't even close to having a uniform line. I can't bend it to the shape I need without manipulating the wire around to the point it has a ton of up and down curves in it. My other problem is if I use an arrow with precut feathers as a guide, and then start to adjust the wire it seems like a never ending process as moving one end changes the other.
Is that just norm or is their something I can do to make it more systematic.
Call me sick but the smell of burnt feathers smells like fun because when I'm burning them I am always having a good time making arrows.
Chris
Curt,
I rotate my arrow fast.
I always make sure the ribbon is redhot - otherwise I have marked the wraps.
I just pinch the fletching between two fingers and run up the grain to get rid of the brown.
JD
Chris, do you draw the shape on a piece of paper and use that to get your bends where you want them? The fewer times you bend the wire, the smoother it will be. Mine roller-coaster some, but I even them out as best as I can and fine-tune it once I put it on the transformer. I still have the first wires I bent...what a mess! But they work. :readit:
Either I don't notice the waves on the fletches or they are good enough. They look OK to me.
Killdeer
You can straighten the wire out using the flat face of a hammer and a hardwood board. Just light taps will do.
I don't really use another fletch as a pattern (what's the fun in that ) but just figure out how long a fletch I want and how tall. The rest is mostly ornamental.Yeh, it takes some tweaking on the burner itself to get everything the way you want but not that hard really. I hang the wires on the wall on nails when not in use. Keeps them from getting bent.
Pretty much everyone has covered what needs to be known and done with feather burning.
Take the time to accurately tailor the the nichrome burner wire to perfectly fit the shaft diameter and length of fletch in question - which means adjusting the burner wire for distance from the shaft as well as centering the wire ends on the uncut section of feather you just stuck on the shaft. To me, this is THE most important step. Keep working at it 'til it's perfect. If you change shaft diameters, you MUST start all over again.
With carbon shafts, don't let the hot wire touch the shaft!!! :scared:
If the fore and end of the feather doesn't burn clean ('cause you wanna make SURE not to have the burner wire touch the shaft) clean that up with a sharp scissors tip.
Make sure to add a drop of glue at either feather end when done.
Rake over the burnt feather outline a few times from front to back with a knife blade edge to dislodge the burnt feather dust.
While waiting for the 4" Vario Hunter Clipper to show up I'm gonna attempt the burn a similar shape that's 4" x 1/2". Setting up a nichrome wire to burn a short 'n' low shape ain't easy!
Really cool things about feather burning - the fletches are uniform in both shape and location, and you can concoct some very unique feather shapes. The down side is it usually takes awhile to set it all up perfectly (but ya only do that once, typically) and that horrific stink - yeah, the wife hates it, but it's the aroma of the woods and hunting to me. :D
Here's my 4" high feather burnt shape in a 4x4 fletch on an AD shaft - more surface area there than a 3x5 fletched arra ...
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v82/rfdee/archery/4fletch.jpg)
The quiet fletching thread had me thinking and tinkering Saturday night. I am using 5" shield cut feathers and my practice arrows are pretty abused, so.....
I had a small space heater that has the hot wires running through it- the heater gave up the ghost so I tore it apart with visions of a feather burner in mind. I threw a quick wood frame together to hold the wire and made a few cuts for the arrow to sit in and be able to rotate it. This is the part where I say "don't try this at home"-but I'm not an expert- just a tinkerer...
I grabbed an old 6v/12v battery charger and hooked to the end of wires on 12v setting- wire was about 10" long. It heated up very nicely- and burned through some junk feathers easily. The one thing I did notice was the wire expanding and changing shape slightly. I wanted to round the back of my shields and it worked for a few arrows- but the wire is too weak and flexes too much. I'm still waiting on the quiets tests to complete, but really like the 4 fletch option like Rob's, but with a touch more rounding at the back.
I'll have to work on finding a bit stiffer wire, and will eventually break down and buy a burner. But the project is going to lead me to refletch my arrows, I can see it now......
Maybe it was mentioned I didn't read all the responce's...
The wire will move from the cold position to where it will be when it gets hot,start with an arrow that you don't care about that much....once set ya shouldn't have any trouble hitting the wrap or crest
To burn a new shape I make a pattern from 1/4" AC plywood. I then form the wire around that. It gives a smoother burn than bending the wire a multitude of times with pliers.
Also before getting to carried away burn a couple and make sure they aren't noisy. Some patterns will create more turbulence as they cut through the air.
Now that Wapiti, is an MOST EXCELLANT idea :clapper: :clapper:
Thanks I'm gonna be for doing that trick.
Hi Curt,
I went back and found an old post where I told someone pretty well step by step how I do mine and just cut and pasted it below.
Here it is:
Here's a rundown of how I do mine. For best results read it all before you start.
First, you need to decide what shape you want and bend that shape into your wire right in the middle. You can get fancy and make small plywood or cardboard jigs to get an exact shape but we're not talking rocket science here, just arrows. I just use my fingers and sometimes some needle nose pliers. You really can get as close as you need to by eye. When using the ribbon wire, I always put the concave side towards the shaft. Seems to work better that way.
Anyway, once you have a basically straight wire with a desired fletch shape bent smack in the middle, use the needle nose to bend the wire sharply away from where the shaft will be RIGHT where the fletch shape ends. You don't need to kink the wire double, just make a nice crisp angle or small curve away from the shaft at about a 45 degree angle. The idea is to have as little wire as possible getting close to the shaft.
Once you get it bent away, lay it in front of your burner and eyeball the width between the ribbon holder contacts and bend the wire so that it goes to that width (don't matter if it gets there in a curve or a straight line) but at that point make a bend so that the ribbon ends will point straight at the holders. Stick the ends in the holders and leave them loose. One side should also have a little hockey stick shaped metal piece in it that comes with the burner. Not sure what it does but I think it provides better contact and helps support the wire. It can be removed but I think then it doesn't get as hot. I'm not sure though. Been a long time since I looked at the papers that came with mine. I just leave it in all the time.
Now, with the burner unplugged, take a bare shaft and put the nock in the cone end of the holder and the shaft in the V. You want the wire to miss the shaft by about 3/32" or so. It should just clear the quill of a fletch when you are burning so look at how thick the quills are on your fletch. If the wire does not sit where you want it, move it in and out of the holders for hight setting then tighten them down. Check for movement when you tighten the holders. Sometimes it flexes the wire and causes it to move the whole thing. Minor tweaking where it comes out of the holders should take care of it.
Now lay a fletched shaft in the holder. Burner still unplugged. If the wire is off front to back, loosen the two screws holding the shaft holder to the burner and move it in the slots to position the shaft where you want it so the sharp bends of the wire are right at the ends of the fletch. If you can't get quite enough adjustment there, you can bend the wires to the side where they come out of the holders but you will have to readjust the hight. If you have a strong helical in your fletch, you will have to rotate the shaft to check the front side fit on one fletch and then rotate the other way and check the back end on another fletch from the other side of the wire.
Now, if all looks well, plug the burner in and let the ribbon get red hot. Watch it to see if it distorts from the heat. Sometimes they do that the first time you heat them after bending. Carefully lay a fletched shaft in the holder without touching the wire. Double check your wire fit and see if it tries to burn the shaft anywhere. Adjust as needed. Of course, unplug and let cool first....
Once you are set pick your worst arrow first just as a precaution and with the burner plugged in get ready to burn your first arrow, er fletch... Since the burner ribbon is so thin and any breeze will drop the temperature quite a bit, be sure to do it somewhere calm like the kitchen. Anyway, I like to face the burner away from myself and look over the top as I work. That way I can lightly pull the shaft into the bottom of the holder as I turn it. Be sure the nock is bottomed out in the holder cone and at a medium slow speed rotate the shaft so that one fletch passes through the wire. Lift it out and inspect it for problems. If you have some strands that did not burn, you either rotated too fast or in the wrong direction. They might pull off or you might have to run it past the wire again. Look at the ends for black spots on the shaft. A little bit is normal since the smoke sticks to the shaft but it wipes off. I usually have mine set where the front of the quill gets melted just a tad bit but then I trim it on an angle with my knife to get a smooth transition and add a drop of duco cement. The trimming removes the damaged area. The cut edges of the feather will have dark burnt residue on them but it comes off after shooting a couple times or you can run the ende of a knife blade down them lightly and scrape it off. If you are satisfied, go ahead and burn the other two fletch. Pay attention to how fast you turn the arrow. Too fast doesn't burn it cleanly and too slow can set the whole fletch on fire. By your second or third arrow you should be able to rotate smoothly through all three fletch and get nice clean burns. If crud builds up on the wire, give it a few seconds to turn to ash and wipe it off with a knife tip or the needle nose. Piece of cake!
By now you have probably either figured out that burning feathers smell just like burnt hair and your wife is really ticked off about the smell in her kitchen or else you followed directions and have just read all the above....so I'll tell ya nicely, the part about doing it in the kitchen is sort of an old joke among archers and new guys. Do it outside!
Have fun and enjoy that burner. They are the only way to go in my book.
By the way, the above post was written for a guy who was totally new to archery and I was kinda having a little fun with him about where to use the burner and got overly detailed in the how to so disregard the stupid parts.
QuoteOriginally posted by wapiti:
To burn a new shape I make a pattern from 1/4" AC plywood. I then form the wire around that. It gives a smoother burn than bending the wire a multitude of times with pliers.
Also before getting to carried away burn a couple and make sure they aren't noisy. Some patterns will create more turbulence as they cut through the air.
Yep, do the same thing but I make the 1/4" ply pattern about 1/8" to 3/16" smaller overall - the Young nichrome ribbon wire has some resilience due to the arc'd cross section, and it's way easier to coerce the wire to a larger shape rather than smaller.
Really Important!!! make sure the glue is REAL dry or you can make TIKI torches in 2 seconds!!!
And when the whole feather burns the smell is non forgetable!!!
QuoteOriginally posted by tim-flood:
Really Important!!! make sure the glue is REAL dry or you can make TIKI torches in 2 seconds!!!
And when the whole feather burns the smell is non forgetable!!!
Thankfully, most of my fletches are taped on and not glued. :D
I'm still doing mine in the kitchen. The only flak I get is from the smoke alarm.
Killdeer :archer:
You guys have helped with a lot of great tips :notworthy:
Thanks for taking the time to write all that out, Dave. I'll have to try facing the burner away from me.
Chris, I do best using a new wire when making a new shape or length. They are readily available and reasonably priced. I shape the rear end of the wire first, then shape the curve of the fletch by pinching the wire between my fingers and pulling it thru. Measure for the end, allowing about 1/8" for the wire to expand, and bend the wire up.
DRR, I think the charger may work OK for a power source, but I strongly recommend using the Young burner wires. They will hold their shape and are much cheaper than the aggravation of the heater wire.
Wapiti hasit right,save yourself some grief!! make a thin plywood form to bend the ribbon,makes 'em pretty,no ripples. I bought my burner many years ago. I bought 3 ribbons with the burner, made one shield shaped (shown)and one parabolic. I still have the other ribbon around but i'll probably never need it (http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t260/waynewynn/stripersmuzzleloader160.jpg)
(http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t260/waynewynn/stripersmuzzleloader165.jpg) (http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t260/waynewynn/stripersmuzzleloader163.jpg) I don't think I would hammer the wire straight because it would remove the concave shape of the wire that is necessary for a clean cut. buy a new wire and take the time to shape it right , it'll last forever!! Wayne
Do it indoors and you'll be lookin' for a new place to live I'm told.
Yeah, I'd like to buy a burner, but not a priority according to the wife, "all your arrows have feathers", little does she know they won't for long....
Anyone have any tips for removing wraps? I've had to replace a few feathers and I have a terrible time getting the old wrap off.
Thanks