Copper Inuit Arrows Ready to Ship

Copper Arrowhead

I finished up the Copper Inuit arrows and took them out for a few test shots with the Tuktut Nogait bow and also to take some final photos.  I don't have good targets or enough room to shoot very far in the bag yard, I just wanted to make sure that the nocks fit a sinew bowstring and that they actually flew pointy end first.  They do and nothing broke, so I'm happy.  I sent the photos to the client for approval and hopefully I can get them shipped off in teh next few days.

The arrows have copper arrowheads and rivets, antler foreshafts, pine main shafts, ptarmigan feather fletching and sinew and hide glue lashing.  The lashing holds the feathers in place and is used to reinforce the wood socket on the mainshafts so that it will not split. 

Most are a little big for the
Tuktut Nogait bow.

Four of the arrows are spoken for and the other will enter my resource collection for demonstrations.  Two will be fitted with blunts, which I intend to use for a bit of small game hunting in the near future.  The short arrow on the top is the first one that I made as part of a big Copper Inuit set a couple years back.  The client  at that time had space restrictions in their exhibit design, so the arrows had to be short.

Some of the foreshafts have barbs

This is the first time that I made full-size reproductions and I must admit, they are longer than I had anticipated, with most of the reference arrows that I found in the Canadian Museum of Civilization's online reference collection measuring between 80 and 88 cm.  The foreshafts and mainshafts are all different lengths and interchangeable, so you can make a lot of different length arrows depending on how you combine them, but for the client I picked four arrows that fall within 78-88 cm.

These are my four favourites out of the set, hopefully the client will feel the same.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast