Youngs Feather Burner

Reviewed By Steve , 30 October 2009

When making your own arrows you have a choice of ready cut feathers or full length leathers
you can cut yourself, I like to make my own fletches and I have several methods of shaping
them, in the past I used to make a template and try to cut them with scissors, they looked
different all right, different from each other !

One of the pleasures in making your own arrows is the actual making itself and ending up with
a beautiful arrow, which not only looks good but is to your own exact specification.

The young feather burner offers you the opportunity to make any shape fletch you want. Firstly
I cut the length from a full feather and fletch all my arrows, what I then have is a great big flu
flu looking arrow.

The feather burner passes an electric current through a ribbon of steel which glows red hot, it is
set up so that you put the arrow in the nock receiver and slowly spin it, the ribbon will cut
whatever shape you have bent it in to. It takes a few goes of trial and error to work out how far
to bend it, but once you have played with it a while you can create wonderful shaped fletches
up to 6 1/4" by 1 1/4" .

It is an American product so is set up for 120AC so you will need a transformer for the UK
which are readily available on Ebay.

It smells so do it in a workshop otherwise you will be in trouble ! The instructions are

rudimentary and in fact you don't need instructions as much as practice, bending the ribbons
takes a while to master and if you keep getting it wrong the ribbon will only accept so much
bending back and forth before it all starts to look ugly. Turning or spining the arrow at the right
speed also requires practice and patience.

My only niggle is the nock receiver is not a positive as I would like, if you do buy one buy a
spare along with a bunch of extra ribbons as you will get through them playing about and
making the odd mistake.

Once the fletches are burnt you will see a black ash residue on the edge of the feathers, I quite
like this effect and on some arrows leave it on, if it offends you just take the back of a knife and
scrape it down the fletches and it all comes off. I have fletched 3, 4 and even up to 6 fletches on
an arrow and used the burner to cut them. Once you have mastered this great tool you will
probably never buy ready cut fletches again.

1
Don't Forget to buy a converter as this is designed to operate at 120V AC

Turns the flu flu in to a striking arrow