| Natural feathers are superior to any petrochemical-based fletching especially when shooting off the shelf/off the hand. Try using Fabsil (silicon spray for outdoor clothing) - several lightly applied coats with plenty of drying time between applications. Steam usually brings bedraggled looking feathers back into shape. If the feathers are getting frayed from shooting your shafts are probably out of tune. Try tapering the nock end of the shaft to give extra fletching clearance.
Fletch a few shafts with the smallest feathers you can find or cut some feathers down to under 2" long by about 0.5" high. Tune them so they are grouping with your big-fletched shafts at 20 yards. In effect you are bareshaft testing but with just enough extra stability as you are shooting heavy bows off the hand so can't be expected to have a perfect release every time.
Once you have totally sorted spine, point weight, nocking point, brace height etc make a full set of arrows to the same spec but fletch with 5"+ feathers. Even if they get soaking wet whatever feather is there will still give reasonable steerage as the shaft and bow are in tune. When you finish knock the excess water off the shafts and let them dry naturally before steaming them up again.
Damaged sections of fletching can easily be cut out and replaced with a splice of the same or a different colour. |