Making Arrows As a teenage boy looks on, an older uncle demonstrates precisely how to attach the feathers to the shaft of an arrow. The older man is passing on the knowledge of how to select and work with stone or bone, wood, animal sinew, and even feathers in order to produce a single, well-made arrow. The boy is beginning work on a new arrow by scraping an arrowwood sapling with a piece of sharp flint to remove the bark and smooth the shaft. Next, he'll get some animal sinew, or tendon, and fasten a bone or stone point onto one end of the shaft. He and his uncle have already made some stone points in the area to your right, behind the stump, where you see the hammerstones and stone debris. The uncle will show the boy how to select good turkey feathers, split them down the center, and cut fine grooves into the wood. Then the boy will attach the feathers to the shaft, using more sinew, as the uncle is doing now. Finally, he'll use the tool on the rock next to his uncle, a hafted beaver tooth, to notch one end of the arrow where the bowstring will fit. Maybe this will be the arrow he'll use to kill his first deer, an important event that is noted by the entire village. Behind the Scenes with Curator Steve Cook The arrowheads, or what we call projectile points, that you see here are made out of three different types of stone, and there are also some made of bone. But they're all basically the same shape; they're triangular, with a narrow point and a wide triangular base. There are several advantages to this shape. First, the wider the base is, the longer the distance is between the point and what we call the barb, or the base. That gives the point a longer cutting edge. So when you shoot an animal, you have much more cutting power to penetrate the skin and cause damage. This isn't particularly nice to talk about, but the bottom line is that when you're hunting, you want to kill the animal. The second advantage is that with a wider barb, it's less likely that the arrow's going to fall out of the animal. And the third is that the projectile point does more damage when it's inside. These points are basically the same shape as today's iron arrowpoints used by bow hunters, the only difference being that modern points have three or four blades to them. But the shape's the same, and that's because it's the most effective form.