I've been shooting on and off in my backyard an old fiberglass? longbow that my dad brought back from Vietnam... yea, its that old. And I had been using just run of the mill sports authority aluminum shaft arrows with plastic fletching and target tips... cheap but effective for just back yard fun.

After many years break aside from the occasional back yard bored summer afternoon, I started getting back into it. I decided to grab a replacement string for it, and while I was at the store, bought 6 good carbon arrows with real fletching, cut to my draw length, good solid arrows.

When I got home though I relized, the orientation of the fletching is off. All the arrows I had, and how I had been tought to shoot, was once the arrow is locked on the string, the offcolor of the three fletching sticks out pefectly horizontal if the bow is held perfecly up... ie. once notched in, the off color fletching piece makes 90 angle with the bows axis.

Now, these arrows I just bought (which were made on the spot by the salesman) dont make a 90 degree angle. its actually almost 45 degrees, so that if placed with the offcolor fletching out, once released, two of the fletchings have to contact either your finger and slice you open and on the other side squish against the bow. now, after a few shots my finger was sliced pretty good, and it looked like the fletching that was being forced against the bow was now squished in relation to the others, and i doubt it will last long and peel back after a few more shots. I also have a recurve bow with a decent sized shelf... but same problem, only it spares your finger from being sliced but now simply squishes the outer fletching against the shelf furry protective cover (forget what its called lol).

where the fork ends of the arrows just placed on at the wrong angle, or am i doing something wrong? mind you i have no official training, but ive never had a problem with the orientation of the arrows for the last 15 years i had been using them, and i dont feel like ruining these rather expensive new ones if they were put together wrong, or something stupid like something im doing wrong. thanks all! i'll take pics later if i can to make it easy to see.

 

You need feather fletching to shoot a recurve off of the shelf as you described or an elevated arrow rest like a New Archery Products Flipper rest. Otherwise you are going to get horribly inconsistent arrow flight.