How To Make A BOW and ARROW

Hey everybody, this is Chris. Today I'm going to teach you, in detail, how to make a bow and an arrow. I revised the original version of this video, focusing on the design aspects and incorporating in the learnings I've gained since I started shooting the bow. I also want to let you know about some upcoming projects. I'm going to be doing a tool education video and then two videos based on the TV show, The Walking Dead. I'm going to do a wood carving and then I'm going to make a functioning crossbow for Daryl. Apparently he lost his. So make sure you subscribe and you can track my progress by following me on Twitter and Instagram, AtChopWithChris. Here we go. They cut some hickory trees down along this local bike trail, so I'm going to take some tools back there and harvest it to make the staves. Unless I get arrested, of course. This hickory log is about 10 inches in diameter. I'm going to cut off about a 6 foot section. I'm all done with my crosscut saw. Now I'm going to use my sledgehammer and wedges to progressively split this log into smaller and smaller pieces until I finally have my staves. There's quite a few visible knots on this half of the log, so I'm going to focus on this half. Here are the hickory staves. Now I want to pick the stave that's the straightest and has the least amount of knots in the bark and sapwood area. The two most popular types of wood used for making bows are Osage orange and hickory. If you're using Osage orange, you will use the heartwood. If you're using hickory, you will use the sapwood. This is hickory, and it's very important that when you remove the bark, you preserve as much of this top layer of wood as you can for the back of your bow. Ideally, you want to use hickory that's fresh cut in the spring. Then you can peel the bark right off. You'll save yourself a lot of trouble, as you're about to see. Here we go. As I go to remove the bark, I'm going to try and get in between the bark and the wood and kind of peel it off. Now I'm going to use my spokeshave to peel off a finer layer of bark. I've pretty much removed all the bark. Now I'm going to do the fine work with my scraper. You know, the benefit of video editing is it makes everything look so easy. But it's not. I'm on my third stave. The first one split on me. Very disappointed. The second one, it's all twisted. Now the third one, that's been a dream, so far. The bark came off in one piece, and it's perfectly straight with no knots. Let's hope this is the one. Now I'm going to use my fro and my mallet to start getting the stave down to size. There you go. This stave is 70 inches long. I've got the center line marked with the string, and I've got it marked for the very center of it. At each end, I'm going to do a quarter inch on each side of the center line. Then at the six inch mark, I'm going to go three quarters on each side. At the transition mark, which is four inches below center line, I'm going to go three quarters on each side. At the bottom of the handle, which is two inches from center line, I'm going to go a half. And where the handle's going to go, I'm going to do kind of a bulb. I've got the bow traced out. Now I'm going to use my single bevel hatchet and draw knife to carve... Damn it. It's starting to take shape. Now I'm going to do the side. When I want to make sure that I don't go too deep, I turn my draw knife over. You just get better control. As I'm thinning down the limbs, I'm flexing them just to see where the weak spots are and make sure they get used to being bent. Before I go any further, I'm going to remove all the tool marks on the back side of the bow. That's because when I go to draw the bow, if there's any tool marks, you could get splintering and it could eventually break. There's also a slight twist to this limb. And I'm not sure if I should be starting over or not, but I'm just going to file it down and file out that twist as much as I can so it's even on both sides. Now I need to make a tillering stick. A tillering stick has two primary purposes. First it's used to condition the limbs so they get used to being bent. But secondly and more importantly, they're used to bend the bow and assess how evenly the limbs are bending. Let me show you. It may not be obvious to you, but this side bends a lot more than this side. And I know why that is. There's a thin spot right here. So now I need to take material out of this side and re-tiller it and make sure it's bending evenly. So as I continue to take material out to reduce the poundage, I'll continue to tiller it farther and farther down to condition the limbs and make sure they're bending evenly. It's very important to go slowly because if I remove too much wood from the bow, I'll end up with a 30 pound draw versus a 50 to 60 pound draw, and when I shoot narrow it'll just go bloop. I built this jig to help me hold the bow and it locks right into my carving bench. I'll be using both a coarse and fine rasp. Here we go. One of the mistakes I made is that the wood wasn't fully seasoned before I started tillering. So even though I've just begun to shoot it, I've got a permanent bend in it and I've actually lost draw poundage even more than what I expected. So make sure before you start tillering that the wood is fully dried out. Okay, each limb is bending evenly. Now I'm going to remove wood from both limbs and continue to tiller it until I get the right draw poundage. A couple of rookie mistakes. I should not be doing so much tillering until after I put the arrow rest in because that will impact how the limbs bend. And secondly, the arrow rest should be two inches above the midpoint of the bow. I've already taken out too much wood from that area, so I have to put it in a bit higher. I've carved a curved relief here so the arrow has less contact with the wood when it fires, and then I've come about a third of the way in on the limb. I've got the arrow rest installed, now I'm going to do more tillering for poundage. I hope it doesn't break. One big mistake I made is that I took out too much material in the arrow rest area. This is only an inch and a quarter wide and an inch thick, and so I've created a weak spot here in the handle. When I draw the bow back, I get flexing in this area. So I would go at least an inch and three quarters wide and at least an inch and a half thick where you're going to put your arrow rest in, and keep it thick all through the handle area and then tiller it down further out. That way you won't create a weak spot. Now I'm going to put a string on and check it for poundage. I'm sure there's a better way to do this. I'm wearing safety glasses because I think this is going to blow up on me. Wow, looks like a real bow. Now I'm going to check the draw poundage with the scale. The line is where my draw length is, I'm not going to go all the way. 46. Let's go a little further. 52. Oh, it's pretty close, pretty close. Now I'm going to put this in the vice and tiller it with the string on it until I reach around 60 pounds at a 30 inch draw length. I had to do some more work to get the limbs to bend evenly. Now let's check the poundage. 55 pounds. Like any rookie making a bow, I tillered a bit too much, so the poundage isn't quite what I want, but it's going to work just fine. One of the key materials I need to make this bow and arrow is pine pitch. Very sticky, almost like glue. Well I'm about 20 feet up in a tree, and look what I found. The mother lode of pine pitch. Let's see if I can get it without killing myself. Yeah! Jackpot! The bow's looking great. All I need is an arrow. We'll start with some straight grain dash. There's way too much chatter for me to use my foot powered lathe, so I'm going to use my spokeshave to rough this in. I love using my foot powered lathe. Flushing the toilet, perfect timing. I love using my foot powered lathe, but instead of starting with a large block of wood and working it down on a lathe, you're better off to start with a small branch and working it down by hand. Now this arrow is way too thick. It's a half inch in diameter. This should be no more than 3 eighths inches in diameter. I'm working on the arrow. I took a concrete block and drilled a slightly tapered hole in it, and I take my arrow, put it in there and slowly work it down. And eventually when I get to the bottom, I'm at the right diameter. I think it turned out pretty good. Now to attach the feathers and the broadhead, I'm going to use pine pitch, and then I've taken deer ligament, which is called sinew, it's been crushed and turned into fibers and then soaked in water, and I've wound it into string. I was going to use goose feathers. That didn't work out. So now I'm going to use turkey feathers. Yeah! I have to admit, I was very excited to get the feathers from the turkey pen, but domesticated turkey feathers are very flimsy and not very waterproof, and so it's best to use something like goose feathers, which are very waterproof and very durable. Lots of people have commented that when you install the arrowhead groove, it should be against the grain, not with the grain. I'm not sure how important that is. What is important is that you properly bind this to give it strength, so it won't split. As the sinew dries, it adheres to itself. And mixed with a little pine pitch, this broadhead isn't going anywhere. Now let's put on the feathers. To help me get the feathers on, I'm going to use these rubber bands from my daughter's braces. Pine pitch is sticky, but it's not glue. So as I've shot this arrow into the target several times, the feather has started to pop off of the shaft. And so you can either bind it in the middle, or I've read you can mix one part charcoal with three parts pine pitch. And that behaves more like glue and dries much harder, and that should take care of this problem. Well, there's only one thing left to do. I need to shoot it. I really enjoyed building this bow. It was much more technical than what I expected, so I enjoyed the challenge. Here we go. That flies pretty good. I hope you enjoyed this video. Please subscribe to me on YouTube, and follow me on Twitter and Instagram, so you don't miss out on future projects.