It is so good you're here today because today we're mixing it up a little bit.
This is the second time I'm going to try to make a bow with pencils,
but this time instead of the pencil being the bow, the pencil is going to be the arrow.
And I'm going to use maple and a bike tire for the back of the bow.
Hey, it's future Kramer. I'm going to help commentate from over here.
Kramer, you're going to fail.
It's going to be a very tiny bow.
Welcome to another episode of Will It Bow?
Yeah, I don't want you to fail too long,
so today is probably going to be more of a Will It Arrow.
So here's the plan.
I still have a ton of pencils, so I'm going to use these as the arrows.
Now I want something that's extremely short, that's really flexible,
that can shoot this fast.
I'm going to make knot grooves here in the back of the eraser,
and we're going to try to project these pencils fast enough
to stick into a target or maybe to shoot through an apple or something.
This one is, again, attributed to you guys for commenting
and letting me know what you would like to see.
So the first thing we need to do is grab a bunch of these maple veneers.
These veneers are really thin, which allows them to be really flexible.
So we can glue this up in a reflex state,
and as they harden up, then we'll be able to bend them back
in the opposite direction to shoot.
This should allow these limbs to bend much further
in order to shoot the pencil, hopefully giving us maximum speed.
On top of these maple veneers, we need to grab some bike tire,
and I'm going to use this as a bow backing.
One of you recommended using this.
I thought it was a fantastic idea.
So I was like, let's cut a little piece of this rubber
and back this little maple bow with it.
Now you're going to watch Pass Kramer fail miserably at making a bow.
He went way too fast, and he didn't think through the process.
I hope you enjoy watching this. I know I will.
This is not a full-size bow, not even close.
We've got our glue. We've got our maple.
But it's going to be a fun one.
Now I'm going to glue up these in individual sections.
They bend quite a bit, so that's really nice.
So that if we bend it and glue it up this way,
the glue's going to harden the wood and then allow us to bend it back the other way,
giving us more flex in the limbs,
hopefully resulting in a faster-shooting pencil.
We're going to do this in two separate glue-ups.
The first glue-up's going to be gluing these veneers together.
The second glue-up's going to be gluing the bike tire onto the veneers.
And then after the bike tire's on, we'll be able to shape it down,
hopefully bend it, and shoot some pencils through it.
Okay, we're going to set this down.
We're going to let this dry.
And then we're going to put the bike tire on next.
Let's do this.
Well, it broke. Yeah, it broke.
The glue-up wasn't perfect, but that's okay,
because when something breaks, we try again.
Almost made it in the trash can.
We try again.
And so I was starting to think, like,
let's actually logically think about how to make a bow that would actually work.
So I've got a little extra piece of bamboo,
and that right there's shorter than a pencil, like,
like, yeah, I don't know what I was thinking.
I was just kind of having fun.
I just had the spur-of-the-moment idea, started making a video.
But now we're going to produce a bow that actually works and shoots a pencil.
I'm thinking on the front of the pencils I can add some extra weight.
I don't know. We'll see where we go with this.
But I'm going to attempt now to make a bow that actually works
instead of one that doesn't work.
It's going to be twice the length of the pencil
or twice the length of our arrow, so to speak.
And that length is about a really good length for a short bow,
and it should shoot the pencil fast.
So with that being said, let's jump into working with this bamboo,
see if I can figure out a way to recurve it
and actually make a really well-working bow.
So...
And that should help it fly better.
But the results weren't great.
I still needed something else to stabilize the arrow.
So from there, we put on some fletching.
I cut one large, full-sized fletching into three little pieces,
and then I super-glued them on.
This kind of helped, but the tip weight still yet was not strong enough.
So the next method I tried was to cut off the point of the pencil,
drill the lead out, and screw a screw in.
I put some super glue in there just to help it hold.
Two-and-a-half-inch trim head screw in.
Now, this is adding a ton of front weight,
but I figured this is probably what I need
in order to make a pencil fly straight.
I used the belt sander to round over the tip
so that I could have a sharp point on the end of this pencil arrow.
And this is how it flew.
This arrow flew straight. It's, like, phenomenal.
I cut a little slit in the back of the eraser
so that I could use it as the knocking point.
With the extra tip weight and some fletching on it,
it shot fantastic.
From there, I wanted to see how fast I actually could shoot this,
so I took it outside through the chronograph.
It didn't pick up the arrow every time,
but after a while, it started picking it up,
and I was getting surprisingly good results.
At the top speed of 67 feet per second,
that blows my mind for a little pencil.
Most of my bows shoot in between 140 and 170 feet per second,
so having something that is this small shoot that fast,
that's awesome.
