Bushcraft crossbow bolts and arrows
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ธ.ค. 2021
- For years I have wondered if I could make a survival bushcraft crossbow using just a knife and the hedges around my field; with the release of the new Tod Cutler bushcraft knives it seemed like the perfect moment to find out. The first film shows you exactly how I made this (rather ugly) crossbow using only my knives. • Bush Craft survival cr...
In this film I explain how to think about the bolts. what the parts do and how to make them work together, giving you the mental tools needed to make bolts out of whatever you can find. It is really simple to make bolts that work well - you just have to understand them.
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A good stability test from model rocketry: find the balance point of the bolt and attach a string there. Then (carefully) swing it around yourself in a wide circle and see how well it tends to fly straight. If nothing else, this lets you tweak your different bolts to have similar characteristics.
Genius. Thanks I didn't know about this, but now so very obvious! Thank you!
Хороший полезный совет 👍Надо будет попробовать
@@tods_workshop one other way of doing a simple stability analysis is to do the following:
1) trace out the outline of the arrow on a sheet of paper
2) cut out the outline of the arrow
3) find the balance point of the paper cutout. This point is approximately the aerodynamic center of the arrow, also known as the center of pressure (Cp).
4) compare the aerodynamic center to the center of mass of the arrow (Cm). Cm should be closer to the arrow tip than Cp. The larger the difference between Cm and Cp, the larger the stability margin (i.e. The arrow is more stable).
This is a good way to guesstimate the fetching size needed for a particular arrow/bolt design.
When medieval problems require modern solutions, and the solutions are literal rocket science.
@@todo9633 & that rocket science is just "tie it onto the end of a string & swing it around."
Teach a man to light a fire & he'll be warm for a day... Set a man on fire & he'll be warm for the rest of his life🔥
They say if you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. But if you teach a man to fish... then he has to get a fishing license. But he doesn't have any money, so he has to get a job and enter the social security system. And he has to file taxes, and you're gonna audit the poor son of a bitch because he's not really good at math. You pull the IRS van up to his house and take everything. You take his velvet Elvis and his toothbrush and it all goes up for auction with the burden of proof on him because he forgot to carry the 1. All because he wanted to eat a fish, and he couldn't even cook the fish because you need a permit for an open flame. - Doug Stanhope
LoL
The tools you craft and test are interesting enough on their own, but your genuine excitement throughout the process is what really makes it for me.
Thanks - I just love making things and finding out new stuff and Glad it shows
@@tods_workshop I use to say that you truly become an adult when you fulfill your childhood dreams.
Believe me sir, it shows 😉
For a more technical take on the issue of mass at the tip and fletching at the back:
What you specifically want to achieve is separation between the center of mass and the center of drag. You want the center of mass to be as close to the tip as possible, and you want the center of drag as close to the back as possible (the center of drag is the point where aerodynamic drag forces are balanced--if you suspended an arrow from a string in a wind tunnel, it would rotate around its center of drag). This is a basic principle for designing airplanes and rockets as well, to varying extremes--too much separation will make an airplane difficult to turn, for example. But for an arrow, where you want it to fly 100% straight, you want as much separation as you can get. Achieve that, and you will have stable flight.
Thanks Ian, that's very helpful
A bush craft trebuchet, now that I want to see!
Tod, I would be particularly interested in what woods found in the wild are the best for making bushcraft crossbows. A video on how to identify a useable wood without knowing the species of tree would be fantastic.
Regarding shafts: When I was a boy my brother had a lightweight fiberglass bow I played with in the yard. I knew better than to use the actual arrows, so I shot stems from a flowering plant my mother grew along the fence line. As far as I can determine, the plants were daffodils. When dry, the stem is surprisingly rigid and can take more punishment than you might guess. Also, due to the Y at the top of the stem where the flowers bloom, they do not need fletchings if shot from a recurve. I used to soke the base in water to add weight so they would fly straighter. Never shot at an actual target with these improvised arrows but I know they would go every bit of 130 feet.
England being one of the many lands where thatched roofs were common, I know you have plenty of reeds. Reeds are naturally straight and can be rigid when dried. Perhaps an experiment with them would yield favorable results.
A good idea, I will have a think
@@tods_workshop Regarding shafts, and indeed heads, I bet dogwood would be top-notch, and native to our neck of the woods too if that's a consideration for some. Dense enough to sink in water, lovely and straight, and the etymology of it is pretty much 'stabby wood'. It was so well regarded in ancient Greece for making spears that 'dogwood' (in Greek, obviously) was used in poetry as a metonym for spear!
With some creative carving using the--thicker--base of the stick to form the head a nice all-in-one arrow could be produced.
StutleyConstable, I doubt daffodils are the plant you're thinking of, their stems are extremely flimsy and hollow, and tend to just rot away after flowering, but there are indeed plenty of canes, reeds and coppicing-trees native to Britain that would do nicely :)
@@tods_workshop I used to make arrows from lilac suckers. Naturally straight and fairly durable, tho perhaps too light for this bow. But tie three together to make one arrow, perhaps?
Hazel suckers, Privet, Holly, we used to cut them too big and shave them down apart from the three inches on the pointy end ! We never had much luck with reeds, they don’t seem to grow big enough where I was brung up ! and they are very light.
@@CrimeVid I immediately thought of Hazel as well. They're pretty common in many forested areas in the Americas too.
I'd think any tree that naturally grows in coppices should be good.
I love the grass fletching, as it so clearly demonstrates the importance of basic principles. The more someone understands a problem, the more efficient (jankier) a solution they can get away with, freeing them up to solve more problems in less time, with less equipment, or in unexpected situations. Someone with knowledge of aerodynamics can fabricate a working self-stabilized lethal missile using nothing but a wonky stick and some plant detritus. The genre of using basic principles to overcome the metaphorical duct tape and chewing gum even has a name - MacGyvering!
My favorite personal example of this is rigging my car's failed alternator juuust enough to get me home (and I mean _just_) using nothing but parts from my electric skateboard in the trunk and bits of wire I found. At midnight in the middle of a sketchy city parking lot. Thanks Tod for keeping our curiosity alive, it may come in handy one day!
I love this series, would love to see you attempt different types of "bush craft" weaponry! (bigger/smaller crossbows etc)
Bushcraft flail :v
Bushcraft ballista
I maid an bushcraft balista out of an Turkish Hazel just by following the first tutorial
It's not as powerful as a thrown spear but I'm much more precise using it
Maby I could try it with to bows in a row where the tips of the front bow are attached to the one at the back 🤔
The most useful protective bushcraft item is the Shrubbery; a sovereign defence against the Knights Who Say Ni.
@@euansmith3699 brrring me a shrubbery!
😆😂
You mentioned fire hardening the arrow heads - that's a subject I'd love to see scientifically tested in a video. I've seen some conflicting research over the years on whether or not it really is for hardening wooden tips (and whether or not it DOES harden wooden tips), or simply a process that developed to make carving more expedient (particularly with stone tools).
Wooden selfbows are tempered with high heat to make them stiffer. I don't think it makes them any harder, though.
It works depending on the wood specifically and also whether green or seasoned wood. Like with green acacia I've seen good increases in hardness of the tips.
I remember seeing some school science project on wooden tips penetrating bison hide and fire-hardened tips did perform better than non-hardened. Not scientific research, sure, but it is a data point.
As for hardening, it is difficult to measure. Any effect will be very shallow and any technique measuring wood hardness would not be able to pick that up.
Now that I have looked, and it has been tested scientifically. fire hardening hazel has increased shore D hardness from around 56 to around 58. The wood became more brittle and less flexible too as a result. So fire-hardening arrow/spear tips does help, although not hugely.
@@chstoney Sounds similar to what you might expect for kiln dried vs. air dried lumber. Not directly a matter of heat but of moisture content.
11:27 "... a bit Matt Easton..." 😂😂😂
These videos are cracking; full of info, enthusiasm and entertainment.
From a Dungeon Crawling point of view, how long is it reasonable to keep a crossbow spanned for? A few minutes? Hours? 🤔
I suspect there's no single "correct" answer how long it'd be reasonable to keep a crossbow spanned.
My expectation is that it depends on the materials involved, is it a metal bow? if so likely not an issue, with a wooden and/or composite type of construction it might be. And can the string material handle it for extended periods, again a lot of variation there with available materials in the past but if I'd have to guess modern synthetic stuff might handle being under high tension better for extended periods than various natural organic fibers. I only have limited exposure to modern factory made equipment myself, so maybe Tod or someone else can provide actual numbers on what is and isn't reasonable for certain combinations of bow and string.
@@extrastuff9463 Thanks; that's some food for thought.
From Dungeon Crawling point of view it would be very annoying to bother with such details.
I'm 33 and have an intuitive understanding of how fins or delta wings work on a projectile through experimental science (video games). Having said that your explanation of how fins stabilize a projectile was extremely simple and approachable like no one has managed from my childhood. Well done.
Todd should become a Physics teacher at Primary School. I bet we would have great scientists coming out of his class........
My tribe used rolled cone points made from steel or (if I recall correctly) brass sheets. Just cut to shape and rolled into a pointy cone. I'd love to see how effective they would be with your testing, especially with how easy they are to make.
Coming soon: Bushcraft Survival Trebuchet
I really love that you test your toys on your dinner.
We look back at history and a lot of the time we just see the end products. It's interesting getting a glimpse into what the development of these implements might have been like.
As always, thanks Tod.
Other people would make paywall courses out of this, Tod just posts this stuff for free. Thank you, Tod, for being you, I will probably never build any crossbow my self or make my own bolts but watching this is really entertaining!
I truly appreciate when you admit your boundaries of knowledge AND refer us to other sources.
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Also, when I made a bow and arrows many years ago, my bow was three lengths of 1/4" PVC bound together with fiberglass tape (making a bow about 20-25 pounds at full draw), the string was twisted fiberglass tape, and the dowel arrows had plugs of closet rod for heads with a six-inch length of torn-off cloth taped near the knock end for drag.
We didn't use sharp heads because we were shooting them at each other (we were monumentally stupid, not suicidal), but the strip of cloth worked well to stabilize the flight.
Whilst you employed different materials in your bow, some of them modern, you still very much made a primitive bow and that is most excellent.
@@Stigstigster Thanks! That thing lasted for almost a year before the tape started seriously delaminating.
Thanks for that. I've long suspected that wooden broadheads would have been used in places where suitable flint was in short supply. Bone and antler work well of course, but take forever to make, even with modern tools, but I could make a wooden broadhead in minutes.
Thank-you for trusting your audience to do the research if they want. I love how you don't try to overexplain minor details, and just get to the point!
As it turns out i knew almost nothing about arrows! Great video!
The main reason you might want to consider fins over drag generators (like the grass tufts, essentially airbrakes) is spin.
If you use some sort of fins as your fletching you can make the arrow spin in the air which has two advantages:
Gyroscopic precession will stabilize the arrow even further
If your arrow isn't perfectly made and veers into one direction, it will now veer into all the directions at essentially the same rate, so you get away with less perfect arrows
That works very well for Olympic Archery, but if push came to shove I would NOT use it on this type of crossbow, as in order to achieve any sort of predictable spin, the fletchings need to all be identical to each other, if one of your fletchings is even slightly longer or in a different angle, but just a matter of 1º or 2º off the rotation axis, then they will veer off-course, and at which point it is just unreliable and you might as well just use the drag generators, because with these you can have a far easier time setting them up (just fluff them up some) and you bypass all the extra work that comes from having spin fletchings
Famously, old time arrows used to be made with the feathers of the same wing of the bird, either all right wing fletchings or left wing fletchings exactly to achieve the desired spin and not have problems with asymmetry of rotation, but these days, it is sort of unlikely that you will find all the turkeys that you need for fletching just hanging about, so in a situation where one needs to "make do", spin arrows are not precisely workable imo
I have to agree with Kantuva. Yes if they are perfect or near then it works well, but in this situation spin stabilisation is tricky
9 seconds in and already smiling....thumb is up :D
you realy are a 18 year old kid with lots of exp
I like how Tod uploads his actual shots even though he missed to be realistic on the actual accuracy of this crudely made crossbow and bolts
There is a corollary to the teach a man to fish theory I heard in the USA: If you teach a man to fish, you'll never get a lick of work out of him 🤣
So enjoying this series. Thank you.
Not sure what's more impressive, the arrows, the bow, or that "Robin Hooding" with the arrow-on-arrow action.
I used to make arrow heads out of 7.62 brass ,cut the head (base) off, hammer flat, cut to shape,they lasted for 1 rabbit or pigeon before rework cheers Tom
I appreciate the "thesis" at the beginning of this.
I got so much enjoyment out of seeing and learning that you can effectively straighten these bits of wood using a good bit of heat to make straighter arrows or bolts. That is great to see demonstrated. This series on the primitive crossbow is fantastic, I'm loving every minute of this. Thanks Tod.
For birding you don't even need points, you can use blunts. Bit of rock or anything with enough mass for a good whack.
Survival Lily is a legend.
Another advantage of the crossbow is you don't need as much training to use it as a longbow. Crossbowmen can be trained, real archers are raised.
I love this content Tod! One of my favorite memories doing this kind of thing as a kid was making a bow out of PVC pipe and paracord with arrows made from dowel rods, gorilla tape fletchings, and cut sawblade arrowheads. Tons of fun to watch, keep it up
Sounds like my childhood
This is unspeakably awesome
I realy like your workshop hoody :)
True signe of a real working man
In survival situation i will make sling or atlactl. Bow or crossbow good for hunting need a lot of time, patience and mainly seasoned wood. Those weapons always was for full time hunters not stranded people. But your episode are great visual and mental enjoyment as usualy.
You reminded me of a small stock of hazel shafts I had laying about. Already way less wonky than what you started with. A few minutes of heat treating per piece did miracles. They will eventually make wonderful arrows.
Thanks for reminding me;-)
And keep up the good stuff.
This is the most comprehensive understandable video I've seen
Actually explaining how the things work have made me understand so much better what I must do and why
Really good job on this video! Love it
Tod, you have been one of my top ten 'goto' channels this year, your videos are always an education and inspiration to new bush craft ideas.
fabulous and informative video
Paul
Thanks - appreciated
Back again in the comments, just to tell you, how awesome your content is!
Some sweet arrow heads
Have always liked all of the crazy wooden arrow heads made for shooting birds, by different tribesman around the world
Love Bushcraft!
I really like these bushcraft crossbow videos. They've made me rethink a lot of the stuff I thought I knew about crossbows!
That was pretty good shooting, Todd! You were essentially trying to get a bullseye in 3 shots with 3 different bolts, and came bloody close!
Interesting how the first bolt always went up and right, the 2nd low, and the 3rd left. You proved how a bit of practice and accommodating for each can get you on target.
A young apprentice with a couple of days of practice could have that down and be bringing dinner home pretty quick.
Makes more sense to me of archers having favourite arrows, those that were more true would be like gold dust.
Very interesting, love the variety of heads and fletchings...
Fun and educational, as always!
I love the channel so much!
Awesome diy and videos...what a joy. Thanks!!!
Amazing work
Always good fun on your place
Fantastic video
Always fun to watch & learn 🙏💪🏹
Thanks for the great and inspired content. I always look forwards to your vids.
Lots of fun and a good learning experience from you. Thank you!
This is a great series. 👍
I like this guy.
I really enjoyed this videos showing us the basics
Very good video! You answered questions on why I wasn't Robin Hood when I whittled on a point and shot it with a stick and string. 7 year olds aren't very smart.
I really love your videos, studing a history dgree and seen this is like reviving history, thanks
Great video, as always! I had no idea it was that easy to straighten out sticks. Loving the content, keep them coming!
Good video.
Excited to see he bushcraft trebuchet :D
This is really good~ just watching you barely miss those shots at the end was a fun one since your reactions on that part really shows your having fun shooting~ but it's a shame that there isn't going to be meat in the dinner table~ welp better luck next time~
This is brilliant! I love the in depth explanations that you give, it really helps for understanding why the important features are what they are
Love TWS and Survival Lilly.
Excellent approach! Thanks for sharing
Glad it was helpful!
Your little series on this crossbow has got me genuinely interested in trying my hand at a bit of bushcraft. When the warmer weather rolls around I'm going to try a few things for sure.
excellent !!!
Thanks for showing the nice video of thr hand crafted arrows.They seem to really sharp.👍😀
I've always had questions about how to hunt in a survival situation. Really appreciate this series!
I love this. Better than movie behind the scenes. Better than interview. Just pure joy!
This is by far the most interesting video I've watched on arrows. Hands down. Learned a lot of cool stuff Tod. Great video as always, and thanks for sharing.
Looks pretty powerful, bush to knee! XD
Great fun.
In my experimentation with my first bow when I was, what, 15, I found out that having just the head on an arrow made it much more stable than having just the fletchings. Love the bushcraft weaponry! One thing of note that I wondered about is why the antler tips aren't ground to a bodkin shape, surely that'll go through flesh and hide better than just a round tip! But then again I seem to remember an antler head found embedded into a boar's jaw near Wolin, Poland, 10th century, so it must have worked as well. Lovely video Tod!
I would love for someone who understands the physics better than I explain why an antler tip as it comes naturally shaped _might_ be better than a tip that is worked into another shape of the maker's choice, from a penetration ability perspective. I think your comment is great and food for thought and experiment.
I just used it as so it was different to the bone tip
@@Stigstigster I am no physicist, but I am a craftsman, so I'll lay down my input from that perspective. Empirically I have found that round awls are slightly harder to push through leather than quadrangular ones, and I think that Todd explained a similar thing in one of the arrows vs. armour videos. A round point (and its body) has to physically push aside the material it is penetrating, which takes a lot of effort, whereas an edged point cuts as it pushes through, making it easier for itself. This applies to even bodkins. Sure it is not nearly as sharp as a razor thin broadhead, but the edges still concentrate force, and a round point is just spreading the force along all of the circumference. Of course, in the antler's example, you would lose some weight due to shaping it to a bodkin, but I assume it would still be useful. That is my outlook on things at least! :)
@@Erikreaver Thank you for your reply. That does make sense. One thing I have considered is that particularly in hunting rather than warfare, when something is more than "good enough" as an unaltered antler tip almost certainly is, there's simply no need to go to the extra effort of reshaping it. So it's possibly a case of simply not needing improvement even though it could be with some effort. A case of diminishing returns on the time spent fashioning the point.
@@tods_workshop Well it was great to see in action. Great video through and through.
So I have a story about bolts and weight of them. The short version is that when crossbows accelerate the bolt, they have two main parameters to them: energy they can transfer and rate of return. Energy they can transfer is more or less draw weight, and we talk about it all the time. Rate of return, though, is the top limit on how quickly the spring of your crossbow can move, and this is why chunky 1200 lbs crossbows can't use 5 gram bolts and make them supersonic - they have a speed limit.
If your crossbow can't get all of its energy out without hitting that speed limit, you'll have problems - both with accuracy and with damaging your crossbow. And this is why adding weight to your projectiles often makes them more efficient.
Now for the story - I saw this in action when one of the guys I knew made a siege crossbow/ballista thing. It was too heavy to use as a normal crossbow (you had to brace it), needed two people to carry it around and used a leaf spring from, IIRC, a train wagon suspension as its bow. More of a small ballista, really.
Now, this ballista we took to a few events, and fired a bunch of things from it. It could send a honest-to-god full-sized brick flying over a hundred meters pretty well. But, we also wanted to use it against people, in a re-enactment battle (the kind where armor was mandatory for everyone). Obviously this was to be done at long range, and with light bolts - the ones we used were made of some sort of really lightweight wood, and had your classic LARP foam padding at the front.
These bolts were not only horrifically inaccurate and prone to tumbling, they had a top range of maybe 30-40 meters, from a weapon that could send a brick to a hundred. We did a few shots from it like that, and they worked the way we needed them to, in that they were quite incapable of harming anyone outside of bruises, but it was quite the object lesson on crossbow physics.
Looking back, I'm not so sure I'd do it again, because that energy was going straight back into the crossbow, and while it was a chunky thing, the thought of it getting damaged enough to fly apart is not a fun one.
More video's of bushcraft bows please.
Hey Tod i replicated ur crossbow came out good
Great stuff - well done and enjoy
Nice, Tod reminded me of Survival Lily, haven't seen what she's been up to in a while!
Wow! Great information on making your own bolts. Incredibly fun series. If you are taking requests, I'd like to see varied type of bush craft slings, sling staffs, other historical slingy things. I've seen the one you've done earlier with the sling and that got me really interested. Happy Holidays to you and your family.
This is insanely practical advice. Todd knows exactly how to make a perfect crossbow, but that isn't the goal at all.
Step one: Make it work.
Step two: Make it work well.
In a survival situation, you might prioritise other necessities over step two. Food is actually not that high to begin with. Shelter and water are higher.
Nice
Awesome video! I also really enjoyed your video crafting the bushcraft crossbow itself. Very informative! I would like to try it on my next adventure in the great outdoors.
Go for it!
You should do a "will it bow" series
Todd, you're wrong, it's pretty fucking brilliant!
Love this video. When I make my own bolts the only thing I do different is offset fletching. I find this helps to compensate for imperfect shafts and other flaws in the construction. Three to five degrees offset (from being parallel to the shaft) seems to help, though it's hard to quantify the exact amount.
A straight shaft has always been important for successful bush craft.
ive once fletched an arrow with pine needles in my youth, and was shocked to see how well it flew
Great video buddy. Making arrow shafts, I like to use two jig saw blades set in a V or straight configuration with a hole drilled through the piece of wood the size of shafts you want that's holding the saw blades. Using a drill an spinning it on saw blades it removes the wood making each one same size an straight. Some might need heat treated if they are bent, but sane size. Even a hand drill will work for making the arrow shafts.
Tod all these exotic glues. Can you make a video comparing these ancient ways of fastening?
7:20 I'm here to head-bend my shafts
this line is ALMOST as good as "if you grease your shaft, does it penetrate better?"
just 9 shots later and just missing by centimetres, I'm well impressed.
Enjoyed that Tod. It may be worth talking about the fact that arrows in a hunting situation generally work by exsanguination on large game rather than hydrostatic shock like a bullet so something broad and slicey in the head is preferred. But for a survival crossbow, birds and small game would probably be more prolific and more within range and power capability, so perhaps a blunt would actually be optimal? Certainly got me thinking 🙂
And thinking is always good!
03:19 - I present to you the 'Crow Fkr'. It's ruthless!
Could you straighten out the bolts by heating them by a fire, and then hanging them vertically with a weight at one end?
The birding point is ingenious , it provides a point for tissue disruption and a blunt shoulder for kinetic energy transfer. Birds can be hard to bring down with a single projectile weapon unless you hit the head. I once shot a pheasant with a .303 Brit and even though I found feathers and a tube of breast meat the bird escaped.
I made all wood crossbow bolts without front weight. They are 10mm in diameter, 37cm long with wooden fletchings and a fire hardend tip. About 12 gramm weight . That's all i did and they work perfect for a light 45 lbs crossbow with 8 inch power stroke.
Thanks for sharing 👍 Suprised you didn't try knapping some flint.
And because I didn't think about it! good idea
I'd be interested to see a comparison between arrows with and without these 3 elements.
Today I've learnt not to get too hung up over my shaft. I feel enriched.
We all need a bushcraft trebuchet video in our lives, just sayin'.
For some stealthy small game hunting.
@@ironpirate8 well, technically speaking you'll have greater range with the trebuchet, so that could count as stealth in my book.
put 2 round rods in your vice. makes straightening much easier when you can look down the shaft