Female: Today in episode three we are going to be making a bush bow. And we are going to be doing so by using all the materials you see right behind me.
Male: The first thing we need to do is try collecting some material. Let us get started.
[Music Playing]
Male: Normally I hate cutting into live trees but for this bow we are going to need a lot of this that you just cannot get from ground branches. We need some live ones.
It does not really matter what type of wood you use. If you prefer nice hard wood like oak, maple, but you can go ahead and use anything you find in the forest. The only difference is with softer wood you lack flexibility which will make you both stronger.
Fewer branches are better branches meaning knots and knots are weak spots where your bow can break.
Cutting off a branch is a slow process you do not want to double your knife all you want to do is just go around the piece and just cut. The arrow is the hardest thing to find because you are looking for the smallest narrowest straightest hardest piece of wood you can locate. And the best for that is—it is important to have the cut this one down for the sake of our demonstration.
We are going to go ahead and use this. We have gathered up our wood right now we are using three different types of woods, roughly four feet long with all the excess branches and leaves cut off of them. Now what we are going to do is we are going to bind them in four places at each end three course of the way down and we are going to make ourselves a grip in the center using the 550 Paracord. Well a 550 Paracord is a standard outdoors item that everyone should have with them.
This is really strong cord with seven inner cores strands of fiber that you use for fishing. This is great to have with you and you should have at least 15 ft. or 20 ft. of this. To tie the sticks and the end, wide, narrow, wide, wide narrow, wide. And that is going to give it a little extra flexibility. We are going to use our 550 Paracord. We are going to make our loop at end wrap it around once run it through the cord and wrap it back in the opposite direction.
And that is going to give you a nice tight wrap. There are a lot of bendy knots out there that will work for this and they are great. But when you are in the bush you do not have time for fancy. We are going to show you something simple this is just a quick dirty way to wrap your bow and get it started off. Start by making a small loop in one end wrapping it bringing it to the right loop and then tying around the opposite direction. That will make it real tight and snug. You will not have problem with your sticks coming apart on you. You are going to end up with a nice tight bow.
Remember, you will need a little string at the end of your loop so that you can tie up the end and make your knot nice and tight. When you are finish wrapping two ends of your bow you want to make your centered grip.
That is where you are going to be holding on to when you use your bow. Really easy to do that is just pick a string wrap whatever the length of the bow fold it in half and there is your center mark. You can mark that with your knife. To make the handle you start by making one loop and lay it on the bow. Then we start wrapping the rope around the handle. Put one and half inches on either side of that center mark. Just keep wrapping it until you reach wrapping the width of your hand.
Do not be shy to make it nice and tight, the tighter the better. The final step is to fid the last end of your line through the top of the loop in the far end of your grip then you pull back on the string that is under the grip. What that will do is it will drop that loose end underneath the grip you just made tightening the whole thing up. You want to make sure that it is right in the middle it is nice and snug. Last thing you do take your knife cut off the loose ends and you have got your grip.
Now the fun part is stringing your bow. The string should be roughly one or two inch shorter than you are rolling to the bow. And really you want to hold them to place to put
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