Curved Arrows & Fletchings #archery #arrow #hunting

[beowulfshaeffer]

I know you can set it up to spin stabilize, but the main thing the fletching does is add drag to the rear so the head stays in the front relative to the direction of movement. That's why the fletching doesn't have to be perfectly aligned (or even made of truly flat vanes) in order to work and why medieval crossbow bolts got away with a pair of completely flat wooden vanes rather than normal fletching.

[joedad]

Aside from spinning the arrows, rhe fletchings also serve to create drag. When the drag is behind the center of mass of the arrow, it creates a straightening effect which works together with the spinning to make it super stable. If you tied a string to the back of an arrow and dangled it upside down, it would stay straight. Now instead of down say its going sideways and instead of a string you have the drag created by the fletchings.

[sweetcannedbread]

"Missle like effect" they were saying "arrow like effect" when designing missle fins i bet 😂

[fostersstubbyasmr]

Arrows and darts are so stable they almost always self correct, pretty cool

[gotkittys]

Pretty high tech for a 50, 000 year old technology.

[marcusliu]

spinning is one factor. The bigger factor is that it shifts the aerodynamic center behind center of mass which creates this stabilization effect like the stabilizers on the plane.

[defectiveparts]

This explains who modern humans don't understand how archery is one of the simplest and most effective ways to survive. You don't need perfect arrows, just good aim.

[johnkeck]

And, if you have a bow that's string favors the left or right side and is shot from the "favored side", the spine of the arrow doesn't matter nearly as much as it would with a bow that has a perfectly straight string, running down the middle of the bow. ( shout out to Clay Hayes for teaching this!)

[mikel]

this were the idea of rifling comes from.

[musikSkool]

I learned something today. An extremely straight arrow doesn't need fletching. Okay, I guess over very long distances the tail would sag due to gravity, but as far as going straight, it should be fine.

[trevormassoth]

Its actually not spin that stabilizes. Its the fletchings creating lift that counteracts the destabilizing movements of the arrow.

[BrownTrout]

For those who want an actual explanation, the centripetal force caused by the rotation of the fletchings keep the arrow constant within its X, Y and Z axi’s.

[LiveFastRaceHard]

I'm glad you said .005 is a ultra tight tolerance. It gave me a chuckle. My profession, I cut titanium & cobalt chrome down to a .0005 tolerance, sometimes even smaller. Now that is tight!

[plant]

I'll try spinning, that's a good trick!

[timhorton]

The arrow doesnt need to spin to he stable. The fletching creates drag. The center of drag is behind the center of gravity. This causes the fletching to stay in the back and the point to stay in the front.

[VIJAYzk]

Great news! I went arrow hunting this evening and it was hard to find straight sticks.

[Yphrum]

Thank you for using one third of the short to explain decimals.

[billyj]

You can also tune wooden arrows to shoot straight as well

[Freezer]

Fletchings move the center of pressure rearward along the shaft, the center of pressure must be rearward of the center of gravity for subsonic flight stability. Arrows are not gyroscopically stabilized, that would require hundreds of thousands of RPMs. The straightness of an arrow aids its concentricity, resulting in lower dispersion.

[DamonHowattHunter]

.005 straightness is actually respective to the deviation of spine value around the circumference of the shaft. The tolerance for this is .005.