Starting arrows, finishing goggles

I've started working on a few arrows this week.  I have an order for a few Copper Inuit arrow reproductions and I'll probably work on a couple extra arrows for myself.  I need some blunts, if I'm going to try small game hunting with the Tuktut Nogait bow.  I finished up a couple pairs of spruce snow goggles last week as well and include the final photos here.

To fletch the arrows, I'll be using wing feathers from a ptarmigan (known locally as partridge).      Lee Gilbert over at A Whole Bunch of Ings found a wing for me in his freezer.  The feathers are nice and white, with just enough speckles on them to make them interesting.  I suspect I'll go through all of the flight feathers from this particular wing on th current batch of arrows, which means I should think about acquiring more.  Do you have a Ptarmigan in your freezer?

For the arrowheads, I've hammered some old copper pipe flat.  There's still a fair bit of drilling, sharpening, shaping, and antiquing to go into them, but they are starting to take shape.  For the rest of the arrows, I will use antler foreshafts and most likely pine for the main shaft.  There is a small copper rivet to hold the arrowhead in place and the two feathers will be tied on with sinew.  I'm using the same design as these Copper Inuit arrows that I reproduced a couple years back. 

Finally, here's the Wapusk goggles that I put in the mail for the client at the end of last week.  There's not much extra work done to them since I last showed the photos, except they have the braided artificial sinew headband added.

This pair is for me.  Its based on a pair of goggles that we found in 2010 on Baffin Island.  I braided real sinew for the  straps and, like the wapusk goggles above, I finished the wood with heavy burnishing with antler and ivory.  I had a small, broken ivory bird sitting on my desk that I used to polish the wood.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast