Primitive Technology: Bow and Arrow
74,092,150
Published 2016-03-23
The string was made from the inner bark of a fibrous tree. It was separated into thin strips and left to dry. Then it was twisted into cordage.
Arrows were made of the same wood as the bow and were 60 cm (2 feet) long. A notch was carved into the back to accept the bow string. They were fletched with bush turkey feathers picked up from the ground (no turkeys were harmed in the making of this video). A feather was split in half and cut into 3 lengths then resin and bark fiber attached the fletching on to the arrows. The tip of the arrow was fire hardened and sharpened to a point. The fletching was trimmed using a hot coal. Each arrow took about an hour to make. A quiver was made of bark to hold the arrows. Importantly, the quiver was worn on the back in the historically accurate style of native American and African archers- not on the hip like medieval European archers (see back quiver: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiver ).
I cleared a shooting range with a semi rotten log as a target instead of a hay bale. At 10 meters the accuracy was better than 50 % for this narrow target and the arrows stuck into the wood enough so that they were difficult to pull out. The bow was durable, shooting about 200-300 times with the string breaking only 3 times. I made a back up string and repaired them by splicing the ends back together.
In conclusion this was an easy bow to make. The short design makes it easy to find a straight piece of wood for the stave. A short string is also easy to make and short arrow shafts are easy to find. Short bows shoot fast and are easy to carry in thick forest. The dimensions of the bow were based on those given in the SAS Survival Handbook by john Lofty Wiseman. but instead of carving it from a stave from the start, I split the stave and then carved it. I think this requires less time, effort and skill. It also gives a flat bow design that's unlikely to break. It does require wood that doesn't twist much when split though.
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All Comments (21)
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This guy is probably one of the best paid youtubers, heard he gets a basket of berries every full moon.
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Can't wait for the episode were he shows us how he built his PC
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I love how the bow he made is able to shoot many arrows and doesn’t break after a few shots. Man truly Knows what he is doing and is great at it!
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I'm impressed at how accurate he is with his bow considering that everything is hand-made without proper tools and he isn't an archer.
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This man made 6 mil subscribers without saying a word. Fucken legend
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Anybody else impressed by how accurate he is?
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I don't know what it is but this guy manages to have tons of personality without saying a single word now that's impressive
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Really cool to see him use stone-age tools to make stone-age tools. The things you can achieve with nothing but your fingers and knowledge on how to use nature to your advantage
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I love how when it went to the turkey he was just like that's all you need to know
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Show of hands ....who thought the turkey was about to get destroyed?
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didn’t know bow and arrow asmr is what i needed in my life but here we are
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This man has my deepest respect for making things with literally nothing but self made tools. Every person on youtube with "survival" content is just glorified camping with a knife and a sparking tool. The idea is that if it was a matter of real survival I would not have tools I bought from a hunting shop because the idea is it's worst case scenario.
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In your next video can you teach us how you made the camera you used to record
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I’m impressed by the primitive camera he used to film this. Pretty good quality
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Imagine being a wild boar or animal and this guy comes running after you with a wooden glock 19x and a gopro
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I cherish these videos and I hope they always stay up. This page is still the only one i watch where someone makes things from what they find in nature. Thank you for uploading and still being here
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2:54 rest in peace
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once you hit bronce age all your arrows will have +1 bonus damage
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This channel is on of the only primitive building channels that doesnt fake it for views.
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Had the bow set up at a pro shop. It performed just fine youtube.com/post/UgkxQEKUoxLWwayEDZR0NKB-5limn4MBU… . And I would say this is a good starting now that I could pass down to my son when he is older.But the package was missing the release and a nock was missing from one arrow.Dealing with customer support was terrible. They suggested I buy a new release rather than correct their own quality control issue because it’s to expensive for the. to ship it out from China.Update: manufacturer got back to me and resolved the issue. I retract the above statement.
