 Welcome back to the channel, y'all. We're gonna make a bow today. My final hunting bow of this year I've built five bows so far this season Half of them have broken and the other half I just don't feel comfortable taking to the woods Some are underpowered and like this one. I love shooting it, but it's inconsistent. And let me show you why this is my Osage Comanche style flat bow. Actually Comanche bows were even shorter than this They were designed to be shot off the backs of horses. This one's 55 inches So when it's strung up, you know, it's it's about chest level to me Which is great for inside of a blind, you know, it's compact everything be good for stocking, but it's instinctual style shooting Shot was way off. This is what scares me Instinctual shooting your you're basically Burning a hole through the target with your eyes. You're gonna line up that arrow Right where you want to shoot it. You're gonna pull back Wow, I almost missed the target, you know a lot of times I'll come out here and I'll shoot a couple arrows in a row Right the bullseye ten yards feel great. And then that third arrow Will fly like a foot off that takes really really consistent form to be able to shoot instinctual and then when you Get your windage, right? You've got to really know your elevation It just takes a just a ton of practice shooting one in particular bow That is not good enough for me to go to the woods and right now it's just way too inconsistent. So I want to Basically have an anchor point enabled to in order to do that I'm gonna have to make a longer bow. So this one's 55 inches I need about a 62 inch bow that I can fully draw back and get an anchor point either on my nose corner my mouth something Where it's consistent every time and it's not just a snapshot where I pull it back and then just let go a lot of inconsistencies there So this is actually going to be two videos. We're going to take our stave today We're going to get it worked down Into a floor tillered bow and then the next video we're going to get it fine tuned Get it shooting arrows. So let's get our piece of wood and let's turn it into a bow. So first step In making this hunting bow is we got to have a piece of wood, right? So this is a this is a piece of osage that I cut and split Earlier this winter and this takes a really long time to dry. There's You know just depending on the climate It may take eight months it may take a couple of years to dry out completely and you want it to dry out so You're not getting a lot of warping twisting and then set That's why you want it to be completely dry Which this stave is so I had a local boy or give me this And this is osage orange that is dried for two years So first step is to figure out the length that we want and that depends on our draw length which Mine's going to be around 28 inches and that's most people quite honestly on a trad bow I've already measured where I need to cut off the ends There's a knot on one side and I want to be able to miss that knot I don't want that to be at the very end of the bow. So I've skipped ahead of that Already made that adjustment mark my line. So we're going to go ahead and put this Into the vise and cut it. Alrighty Grab our saw Okay, we've got our line here We're going to cut this so we've got a 62 inch bow If you guys have never used a saw like this Japanese pull saw They're awesome Really good at making fine cuts. Okay, that looks good. That is just about as hard A piece of wood as you're ever going to find really the two ultimate bow woods are osage and U pacific U which We ain't got none of that around here, but we got plenty of Osage. It's native to the Red River Valley and This I believe came from Texas All this other stuff I got over here behind me is from Oklahoma Should be right at 62. We're dead on 62 So we're dead on 62 31 is going to be Dead center. So we'll go ahead and mark that So I'm going to mark the center of my bow and then I'm going to take my hand and kind of place it in the middle From side to side. That's about four inches Just go ahead and take the old protractor from eighth grade Put this on here mark this at two and a half inches Side to side from center. Now, there's one thing about this stave that is Different than most of the Osage staves that you get. So I was given this by a bowyer His name is Austin and he had already Worked the back of this bow down to a growth ring. So Woods like Osage Hackberry which is real common around here mulberry of There's a number of other woods That the very dense woods That you'll use where you want the back of the bow, which is the part that faces away from you You want that back of the bow to be one growth ring. So you look at a rings on a tree You know, you count the rings. It's this is just one growth ring. So this is one year You know, this is probably 1994 or something the belly of the bow will work down Through the layers, but it's that back that's really bending away And that's the part that needs to be one layer just prevents splintering from Popping up and that is extremely important on an Osage bow That that's one of the keys that you must follow in order to have a bow that's going to last So Austin actually saved us a ton of time doing that and you can already see This is brown like this is starting to turn brown, which is what it will naturally do But compared to this right here Like this wood is still Sort of yellow next thing I'm going to do is lay out the bow Just kind of use a pencil And lay this out and there's measurements that You could follow and the bow years bible kind of shows you some of these measurements, but Because we have just a few little knots and things on the side some some things that I'm going to have to Incorporate into the bow You can't just go through a knot that because that'll just ruin the bow makes it weak I'm just going to sort of pencil How I want the bow to go just kind of visualize it I'm going to use a hard reference with a measuring tape for the The final tapers towards the ends This bow is already about two inches wide To begin with which is perfect So I'm going to come over here Ten inches off this end as well Five inches from there. I want this thing to be I'm actually going to do an inch and a quarter It's part of the fun right here. You just kind of bob Ross this thing Do whatever you feel like Whatever looks natural to you Okay, I like it So I've been using a machete to shape all my bows Which I mean it's works It works pretty good, but one of you Sent me a really special item I didn't even request this This is a draw knife from Kentucky. I don't know how many years old it is It looks like it's a hundred years old Like it's so old that the the wooden handles the original wooden handles are starting to crack and fall off I had the wood glue one of them back together and this is a much safer way to shape a bow So I'm actually going to use this ancient Pioneer tool pretty awesome To make this traditional hunting bow. Let's go do it Let's make some shavings Last bow of the year It's a good exercise if you don't have a bowyer's vice Table situation It's harder concrete Got a lot more power using this draw knife shitty A wrist isn't going to get as good if I'm working out, but I really want to take a lot off this midsection So as I'm working through this I can start to see that yellow wood underneath See the old wood Where it's dried out. This is my first piece of o-stage I've worked on it's Truly been dried out for a long time All right, I got the first little layer of the onion off here got into some of that yellow wood And we're just going to keep ripping we're going to rip on the sides where we draw our lines And keep ripping on that belly until it starts to bend I've been working on this about six hours total I finished up yesterday came back And I started working on it and I've got it To shape to rough shape. I would say it's a roughed out bow If we can get it to bend a little bit so This is the big test right here. We're going to Put it down on the ground see if there's a bend in it You can still feel the the mass of this bow, but it is shaping up a little nicer. So let's put it on the ground Yep, we're starting to get a little bit of bend in there Just barely Just barely but we're starting to Starting to come together. I can already see this is a this is a big problem area right here So I hit this knot right here with the draw knife Not meaning to just got going kind of quick and hit that knot And I don't know if you guys can see it or not But there is a slight propeller twist In this bow. So just meaning You know like a bow propeller The limbs are sort of turning like this and they're going opposite ways Happens sometimes when the wood dries So what I'm going to have to do when I get it Shaved down even more as I'll I'll heat this wood up And then I'll actually bend it with some pressure And get it to to go straight and then we'll finish the full tiller So that'll probably be on the latter part of this video, but right now Let's clean up this knot. Let's get it where it's floor tillering decently And then uh, we'll have the basics Of our primitive hunting bow Shout out to blades by Blake for making me this beautiful custom knife Look at that quarter inch thick. I think it's sharp as a tack It's awesome. I've actually been using this knife quite a bit for Tasks like this on making bows because it's have so much torque behind it How much grip it has It's a really thick blade Heavy blade, but it's just all packed in there And then it's got a really good spine So what I do want to do Little shavings Take little bits off the bow Makes beautiful Beautiful little curls like that Spots is this is thick like this knot goes through all the way to the other side So when I'm tillering it just makes a weird spot For the bow to bend evenly because the thicker spots aren't going to bend as much So it's like having a big wart in there But it's part of the character We'll do our best to Get it to bend correctly I'm going to move on to the other limb Clean it up a little bit and then we'll check our floor tiller one more time Something about working on a bow though is therapeutic in ways feels really good Connects you To the old ways alive man Let's take a look at it. Let's see what we got. I suppose they just tough stuff. We're bending I don't know if you guys can see that it's just barely bending but it's It's good enough to uh really eyeball This is why you need a tillering tree So you can really see the even Even bend I think it's ready though. I think it's ready to start putting some notches in I'm gonna do a little bit of cleanup work Put some notches in Then I'll put a tillering string on it and then we'll see where those bends are right now This is probably an 80 pound bow At 16 inches We want it to be about a 50 pound bow At around 28 inches. So we get a lot of work to do But it's bending. So thanks guys for tuning in to part one of me building my ultimate primitive hunting bow Hopefully it's going to be the last one for a while, but I'll tell you what this stuff Is addicting once you build one You want to build a hundred you want to get them perfect, but you'll you'll never really get there It's just fun trying. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel hit the notification bell And follow me over at instagram as well to see the little tidbits of my life. So God bless you and all of your great outdoor adventures. I'll see you on the next one