Gluing arrow inserts is an art. It can be quite tricky to get everything perfect, and it often takes a lot of practice to master the technique.
But once you get the hang of it, gluing your arrow inserts is much faster, cheaper, and better than purchasing premade ones.
You can tailor them to your archery needs, and they will last you much longer than store-bought ones.
However, there are some archers who think that gluing arrow inserts isn’t worth the hassle. They believe that it’s just too time-consuming, and there’s no real benefit in the long run.
Do you agree with them, or do you glue your arrow inserts? Here are seven reasons why you should glue yours!
Read More: How To Glue Arrow Inserts?
7 Reasons Why Do You Glue Arrow Inserts
They last longer
Arrow inserts are made of carbon, a durable material, but they are not indestructible. If you apply glue to the inserts, you’ll be hard pressed to snap one.
And if you’re using carbon-based glue, you’ll likely need a lot more force than if you’re using wood glue. This will considerably prolong the life of your arrow inserts, and you’ll be able to use them for much longer than if you pressed them into an uncut shaft.
If you’re using premade arrow inserts, you don’t have any way of knowing how long they’ve been sitting around in a warehouse before they were shipped to you.
They may have been made years ago and maybe near their life’s end. By gluing your own inserts, you’ll know exactly how new they are!
Read More: Can You Use Super Glue for Arrow Inserts?
You can customize them exactly to your needs
If you’re making your arrows, you already have a lot of freedom to customize them in anyway you like. But with premade arrow inserts, you don’t have any freedom.
They’re already made, glued in place and there’s no way to make them any different from what they are. But if you glue your own inserts, you have complete freedom over the design.
You can make the nocks a different size, add vanes, or even include thread to prevent it from spinning. If you have a specific need for your arrows, such as shooting with a compound bow for hunting, you can make your arrows exactly fit your needs.
For example, if you need to shoot from a tree stand, you’ll likely want to use a longer arrow with a heavier weight than if you shoot from the ground.
It’s much easier to customize your arrows this way than to try to find premade arrow inserts that fit your needs exactly.
They’ll be more accurate
Premade arrow inserts are usually made with standard sizes in mind. These sizes are the lowest common denominator and are designed to fit most archers.
However, if you’re an archer with slightly larger fingers or hands than the average person, you may find these inserts too small for you. In this case, they’re going to be less accurate, and they’ll be more difficult to shoot.
Making your inserts allows you to put them in the right size for your specific needs. This means they’ll fit better and more accurately than any premade inserts.
You won’t be able to find inserts that perfectly fit your fingers, and you certainly won’t be able to find any that perfectly fit every single person.
Read More: Arrow Insert Glue vs. Super Glue
No risk of contamination
If you buy premade arrow inserts, there’s always a slight risk of contamination. This is because you don’t know where the inserts were made, and you don’t know how careful the workers were while making them.
While it’s extremely rare, there’s always a chance that the workers could have accidentally contaminated the inserts with bacteria or germs. Suppose you’re sharing your arrows with others while hunting; you don’t want to pass around contaminated arrows.
But even if you’re going to be shooting by yourself, you don’t want to risk harming yourself by inhaling bacteria while nocking the arrow and shooting. By gluing your own inserts, you know that they’re safe to use and that there are no contaminants in them!
Read More: Best Arrow Insert Glue
They’re much cheaper in the long-run
Some people think that premade arrow inserts are a lot cheaper than buying the materials and doing it yourself. While this may be true in some cases, it’s not the case regarding quality arrow inserts.
If you buy a cheap arrow, it will likely break and it might even cause harm to other archers around you. If you buy a high-quality arrow, it will last much longer than a cheap one and it will be much more accurate and consistent.
Premade arrow inserts are often made of cheap, low-quality materials that won’t last very long. If you decide to glue your own inserts, you can use high-quality materials that will last you much longer than premade inserts.
You’ll have more consistency
If you buy premade arrow inserts, you’ll likely find that they differ from one set to another. Some will be longer or shorter than others, some thicker, and some thinner. This means that you won’t be able to achieve consistency with your arrows.
The fletchings will differ on every arrow, making them less accurate and less consistent. If you make your own inserts, you can make them all the same.
You can make them exactly the same length, you can use the same amount of glue, and you can make sure that they’re all consistent with each other.
You’ll achieve precision and consistency that you can’t get with premade inserts no matter how hard you try.
3D printed arrow inserts are easier to glue
Some archers worry that they’ll have to sand or scrape away at the surface of the wood to make it perfectly smooth for the glue to stick.
But if you’re using 3D printed inserts, there’s no need even to sand the wood. You can use the 3D-printed ones as they are. They’ll stick perfectly to the wood, and you won’t need to press them in.
You have to ensure that the wood is clean and dry, and you can use a glue-like epoxy to glue the insert. While this is possible with other arrow inserts, it’s much easier to do with 3D printed ones.
You don’t need to worry about the depth or the length of the insert, and you don’t need to worry about sanding it down.
Wrapping up
You should be convinced that gluing arrow inserts is worth it. They last longer, they’re more accurate, cheaper in the long run, more consistent, and easier to glue. There’s no reason not to glue your inserts if you’re a DIY archer!
