I have a medieval crossbow that I purchased from a friend along with several bolts that he made himself. Some of the bolts have two fletches, which work great. But some have three fletches and they don't work at all, since they don't lie flat against the crossbow, and so can't fire smoothly.

I'm getting ready to strip the fletches off the three-fers and redo them with two, but before I do I wanted to know if I'm missing something ("Three fletches work great, you just have to load them upside-down", or something). Any advice (even, "Yes, strip them, three fletches don't work.")?

Thank you. I can post more details, but don't know all the terms, so didn't want flood this with talk of "brace-thingy" and "pointy -part".

Well, I don't know how common they are, but I know I have seen some supposedly historical examples with two fletches, so off-hand I would say go for two. There are people on this forum that are interested in the crossbows and medieval archery who can give a more concrete answer though.

Theo Mc wrote

Quote:

I have a medieval crossbow that I purchased from a friend along with several bolts that he made himself. Some of the bolts have two fletches, which work great. But some have three fletches and they don't work at all, since they don't lie flat against the crossbow, and so can't fire smoothly.

Medieval bolts always had 2 fletches (as far as I know) and some time in the 17thC bolts with 3 fletches and even some with none that had grooves instead, started to be used for target shooting.

With a two fletch bolt the fletches are opposite each other so they are set at 180 degrees from each other. A three fletch bolts has two set at 180 degrees and 1 half way between, so at 90 degrees from the other two fletchings leaving half the bolt without fletchings. This side of the bolt lies in the groove. They are not like an arrow for a bow where the fletches are set at 120 degrees from each other.

Usually medieval bolts had thin wooden fletchings or possibly parchment, but very rarely feather, though they do indeed work better.

Sounds like you need to strip the 3 and replace either with 3 correctly or just 2.

Good luck

Tod

Wood or parchment? I've always heard that leather fletching was most common, but yeah 2 fletches. This is a tangent, but some solid steel bolts are always interesting...

Most bolts in museums have wood fletches. Parchment is quite stiff so works OK, but does have a tendancy to curl.

All steel bolts are unknown for hand held bows as far as I know and would be a pig to balance and unless you have a very heavy bow you will not have the power to move them far.

Tod

I shot the crossbow some this weekend at a standard archery target at 35 yards. Once I got my sight adjusted (a metalsmith friend made a sight that can be screwed/unscrewed up/down to adjust for height), it shot really well. I was hitting mostly red (gold-red-blue-etc. target) with several golds and the occasional blues. Only shot the two-feather bolts, but the guy that made them put a slight twist on the fletching, which makes them seem to be pretty accurate.

Next I'm going to try to re-fletch the three-feather bolts. Thanks for all the help.

Theo,

Congratulations on a successful shoot! Do you plan on taking before and after photos of the bolts being modified?

Looking good.

The standard modern glue in the UK for fletching is called HMG and maybe it is sold over there. It is a basic solvent glue and is used for modelmaking plastic models, glueing balsa wood, plastic plumbing joints and so on. A general multipurpose glue that is branded and sold for all sorts of puposes, but is bascally the same stuff.

Usually you would use a fleching jig that holds them in place, but if you are careful and slow about your work you will be able to glue the fletch and place it and the leave for 20 mins and it will be dry enough to do the next.

Tod