Fletching



The Fletching skill involves the making of bows and arrows. The products of this skill are primarily used in the Ranged skill. It also provides material with relatively high alchemy prices, so its products are often used to train Magic as well.

At higher Fletching levels, the skill can be trained without losing any coins, although a decent amount of working capital is very useful. A general rule of thumb for fletchers is to wait until you hear 3 "plucks" of the log being stringed to know when you are done. This is an especially helpful tip for those who tend to be multitasking on other things when fletching. The plucking noise only applies to unstrung bows being strung though. Generally, however, each 5 logs that are fletched result in one plucking sound. Since 14 is the number most commonly used for fletching (14 of one type of log, 14 bowstrings), around 3 plucks are needed. Of course, if you are just cutting the logs with your knife then all you need to do is wait until you do not hear any more animation of the cutting to check back on your character.

Materials used
Fletching is a skill most aimed at for 99 as Fletching does not require much effort and you make money out of it.

Bows
To fletch bows, a player must use a knife on a log to whittle a short bow or long bow of that wood. Then, bow string must be attached to the unstrung bow. Bows, especially Yew longbows and Magic longbows, are frequently high alched as a means of income or magic xp. Yew longbows are often made by many fletchers because of their high profit and Xp.

Players may gain twice the normal experience per log that is made into a bow (u) with the Sacred clay fletching knife that is awarded through the activity, Stealing Creation, it costs 20 points to obtain. However, the knife will disintegrate after a set amount of xp is gained (which means it will last longer for lower level bows). For more information, see Fletching training.

Crossbows
To make a crossbow, the player must first use a knife with a log to make a Crossbow stock. Then, the player needs to add some crossbow limbs (Made via Smithing). Finally, the player must string it with a Crossbow string.

Arrows
To fletch regular arrows, use a knife on logs to create arrow shafts. Each log yields 15 arrow shafts. Add feathers and arrow heads.

Achey logs can be whittled into Ogre arrow shafts. Each achey log yields between 2 and 6 arrow shafts. Four feathers are needed for each shaft. The shafts may be tipped with wolf bone arrow heads or with nails. Ogre shafts tipped with nails are called "brutals" and are especially useful for killing Zogres. Any type of metal may be used for the nails.

The following table shows experience per item made, although 15 items are made at a time.

1For arrows with tips, experience includes an additional 20 xp, 5 xp for the shaft and 15 xp for attaching flights (feathers).

2Broad arrows can be made after buying the knowledge with Slayer reward points.

Bolts
Bolts are made by using a metal bar at an anvil while you have a hammer in your inventory. This grants Smithing experience. The bolts created in this process are unfinished and still require fletching (they need feathers). This part provides the Fletching experience. Bolts are also the fastest way to acquire experience, and you will not lose much money. It is also great combined with Smithing

The following table shows experience per item made and per 10 items made (the amount made per metal bar).


 * Broad bolts may be made after buying the knowledge with Slayer reward points.

Darts
You can fletch darts by adding feathers to a smithed dart, noted that finishing Tourist Trap Quest is needed for making these.

Temporary boosts

 * You can eat Orange spicy stew for a fletching boost from -6 to 6.
 * A Fletching potion will raise your fletching by 3.
 * A Fletching skillcape will raise your fletching by 1 when operated.

99 Fletching
Once a player has reached level 99 Fletching, Hickton in Catherby will sell the Fletching cape for 99,000 coins.

Trivia

 * When Jagex updated the chat filter at one time, which broke the communication from Classic to RS2, "fletching" was accidentally censored in chat (because it resembled the word "felching").
 * When the string-x feature was added, it actually made fletching slower since the string-x was slower than what players could manually do (since the feature is automatically used and cannot be disabled). However, most players consider this a worthy trade-off since it made fletching less physically tiring on their fingers.
 * 49 People have 200 million experience in fletching, the 3rd most for any skill.
 * When stringing a bow and then running, it will look as if the top half of the character is stringing the bow and the bottom half is running. This might not be a glitch considering players may perform two actions at the same time, such as running and eating.
 * The word fletching comes from the Latin word 'FLECTERE' which means 'to bend'.
 * Fletching and Agility are the only members-only skills to have 2,000,000 people on the hiscores.
 * Level 99 can be attained in only 2-3 weeks with just 5-6 hours of gameplay per day, and will take less than a week if the skill is trained all day.
 * It takes about 50 sec to cut a full bag (27 logs) to unstrung bows.