Hey, here's my first atlatal.  It and the dart haven't been varnished/stained yet so they should look nicer in a bit.  The atlatl body is made of spruce and the fin with the spur is made of pine I think, ( I was short on wood and I scavenged the pine from a broken desk.)  The spur is antler, the wrapping on the handle and the wrist loop are of jute, and the atlatl is about 25in. long I think.  The designs and pictures I did with a woodburner I got for Christmas, I'd never used one before and I must say I like how it works and looks, has a nice authentic look to it.

The dart is made from a 1/2in. ash dowel and the fletchings are white birch bark, with a steel tubing mini-broadhead that got bent up sticking the dart into frozen earth repeatedly this afternoon.
















To make the birchbark fletchings you simply make two cuts with a saw or you could split the wood in a controlled fashion, (split it down to a node if using cane,) in a crisscross fashion, quartering the dart the length of the fletchings plus about 1in. extra.  next cut two rectangles of birchbark, (or cardboard,) to the appropriate fletching length and fold them lengthwise. Insert the folded bark rectangle into on of the V shape cuts, then insert the other folded bark fletching into the opposing V shape cut.  This makes a 4 feather fletching.  Now whip directly above the fletching until you comve near the end of the dart, (I suggest west county whippn') and to be super safe about splitting  you could whip below the fletchings as well.  This pulls the quartered dowel end back together and keeps the fletchings firmly affixed.  Next you can cut the fletchings to shape and size and your done!  You need not use any glue, and if the vanes get damaged, ( threw it all afternoon and it went straight down through some 30ft.+ spruce trees without hardly any damage to the fletchings,) you can simply remove the whipping above them, pull them out and insert a new one(s).  I see this as an excellent dart to be made on a low budget or in a survival situation as the fletching can all be done with only a little twine or other binding material and a knife.

  Please post comments and advice and if you have any questions feel free to ask!

very nice man..i like the woodburning.

Uhm... I do not know if they truly use your method, for the arrows, but I've seen some archers on History Channel who were using arrows with feathers made of large, hard leaves. Still, I don't know how effective can be such a arrow, I'd have to test it out 
I simply like the idea, which is, howewer, really good for darts!
Crossbow darts used wooden or bronze "feathers" in the Middle Age, but this's another story 
Greetings,
Mauro.

  Perhaps, but I would have to balance the shaft just right.  It seems to be flying really good with them, no tumbling, very straight flight, I can hit within a 4 foot radius consistently with it, even scoring 3 baseball sized bullseyes 3 out of 15 shots I took this afternoon.  The feathers I did have on there went through a tree and got ripped off, so I came up with this so they wouldn't need glue, so far I have put them through quite a few trees and they haven't gotten damaged hardly any. 
  I will be getting some feathers in a bit though!

  Well I have to confess that I did a good study of Paleoarts atlatls before I made it.  It's not a direct copy of any of his but I picked out some of the features like having the spur raised up, the wrist loop and the rounded top portion of the body of it.  I'm sure it would have been less refined if I hadn't had good examples to work from.

Luke, that's one snazzy looking atlatl.  Nice work!

That is also a good way to make arrows, any pics?

  So far they are holding up really well, the trick is to get a single layer.  Birchbark has layers and what you need to do is find the thickest layer, once you have that it won't separate any more and your only enemy is tearing with the grain, so I put the grain going in toward the shaft so it will only tear that way and not right off the shaft.  So far after a good bit of throwing and sending it through a lot of spruce, birch saplings and undergrowth I only have a couple splits, that don't hurt the dart at all really.  The problem I am having is that the birchbark has now curled, so it isn't making a very good X anymore, the bark is curling toward each fletching as the grain of the tree whent that way.  You can straighten it by heating it and bending it back, but I think this won't be a problem if you use the right bark.  I had a piece that  was curled up in a cylinder and dried, so I think if you dried it pressed flat it wouldn't curl on you as a fletching.  It only started to curl though after about 4 days, so if you needed it quick it would still last you that long and you could have some good stuff dried and pressed by then.