I bought a couple of packs of Extreme heat shrink fletching (blazer vanes) from Jim Bow's this weekend. My only complaint was that each pack came with an mini instructional dvd, the first pack's dvd was cracked before I even opened the pack the second cracked as soon as I broke the seal on the packaging, so bad in fact that it broke in half. So I did what any "hi tech redneck" would do I tried to look up the instructions on the "net". Extreme's website was under construction, so that was no help, and other than generic instructions there was nothing on google. The only dvd player that would play any of the mini dvd was my kids portable pink princess player. I saw 2mins or so of Micheal Waddel putting one together, it played in the middle of fletching one, it looked like he'd measured it out (or at least matched it with a professionally fletched arrow) he then shot a regular arrow at target from 50 yards hitting it in the kill zone. Next he shot his heat shrink arrow and hit it in the kill zone too. Then he proceeded to take a stripped arrow put a shrink wrap on it, just eyeballing it no measuring and dipped it into his hot water shrinking it on. He then shot it at the target hitting a little low but still a killing shot.
Thinking that I couldn't mess them up too bad I put 6 arrows together in a matter of minutes, all I did was line up the nock end of the new fletching with a brand new manufactured arrow. Dipped and done!
Went to the range with the new heat shrinked arrows and 3 brand new manufactured and to be honest I was impressed with the heat shrinked arrows performance. The groups were tight regardless of what arrows I was shooting.
For me I think this is a good option as I've never fletched any of my own arrows and don't have any of the "tools" required to do so and at $17 + tax for a half dozen doing a dozen arrows once or twice a year isn't going to break the bank. We'll see how they hold up to the regors of practice and my little test was only with field points next up will be the broadhead test. Let's hope they hold up better than the dvd's....haha
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