Survival Bows (The Tillering Process)

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Tags: Pathfinder,Survival,Bug Out,Bushcraft,Scouts,Scouting,Primitive,Primitive Skills.Traditional,Archery,Bone,Stone,Tools,Self Reliance,Navigation,Orienteering,Tracking,Trekking,Camping,Backpacking,Hiking,Tents,Campfire,Fire,Wool Blanket,Kit,Emergency Preparedness,Spear,Hunting,Cooking,Fishing,Game Cleaning,Meat preservation,Nature,Naturalist,Trapping,Traps,Primitive Traps,Handdrill,Bowdrill

Video Transcription

morning guys Dave Canterbury pathfinder school it's a really really crappy day here in southeast Ohio it's real windy and it's been raining off and on my folks name is a little bit on the west side we're gonna work with a little bit today anyway till we can do if the wind picks up it starts affecting us Mike there might be a lot of editing in and out of this video to try to get rid of some of that for you but I wanted to get a video posted for your day while I could goes down this bad weather for a few days now so far with this Bo all we've used is our axe to make this bow with we've left the bark on the back of the bow thus far and we haven't used any other tools by our axe today we're going to get into a little bit more final shaping of this bow and tillering you this bow you see how we can do that in the woods with some of the things that are available to us that we already have out here so stay with me one of the first things I want to look at today with this bow is if you'll remember right we had what I call the hinge in this limb right here you can see how that limbs bent them real bad right there compared to this other limb that bends pretty even okay that's called a hinge and we've got to get rid of that lets me with this PO to be successful so what we're gonna have to do is we're going to take a little bit of meat off right here in order to help that thing flex evenly along the limb and match the other side we've already taken a little bit of beef off here but we've got a knot right here contend with two so we'll try to take a little bit more off this fade and hope then we can get this hinge to go away and we'll just do that with our axe and I'm just going to do that by taking small short strokes off the inside of the belly above the hinge and I had a lot of guys ask me you know how I got this axe as sharp as it is and we'll talk about that it's not very difficult a lot of it has to do with the quality of the accent you've got we're going to talk about that a little bit too in this video I'll talk about quality of axes I've got a True Temper axe I've brought out here with me I recently received a marbles number 9 Nessman style axe and I absolutely was unimpressed with that to tell you the truth and I'll talk to you more about that why in a little bit but let's try to get rid of this hinge first and see if we can get this thing to have a fairly even floor killer and then we'll go from there

so you can see all I'm really doing now is just taking some small chunks and shavings out right above that fade right out the fade here but above the hinge and I'm just go check it you can see you still got that hinge right there but it's starting to get a little bit lighter than it was and that's part of the tailoring process of a bow is just to look at the way the limbs are bending in places that the limbs are not bending is where you need to take meat off that limb it's not really a difficult process we're not trying to make a professional bow here we're trying to make a survival hunting bow and there's a difference you know we're not in a garage or in a shop with any power tools or anything like that we're just making a quick bow we don't want to spend eight or ten hours making this boat we're trying to do this in about three to four hours so if you want to know how long it takes to make a bow like this you're talking probably three to four hours

I'm working a little bit off right that not arey to just kind of get the Flexi you still got a little bit of the hinge in there but it's not near as pronounced as it was so we're get that taken care of

that will flip this other side over because I know the souther live is a little bit stronger so I'm gonna take a little bit more off the belly on this side even it up with this side before I put it on Tillery tree okay now before we can put this on a tillering tree and kind of see where we're really at with everything we're gonna have to put a string on here for that we're gonna have to have a couple of at least remnants of knock points in here or string slots in the end of our bow and i think what i'm gonna do with that is I'm just going to get in my tool kit and we've got and get that small rat tail file out of there then we bought the other day and add it to our tool kit I think I'll just use that

and just through a couple slots in here in about 45 degree angles and I want to go down about an inch from the tip of the bow and just kind of grind a couple these slots in here just like this alright now this bows not dry by any means actually they got winter because of the rain I didn't put it inside the spider shelter I had it outside so it got a little wetter but right now the main thing I want is just a little area on here for that string to grab onto so it doesn't slip so I'll just put a couple 45-degree knock points in there nothing permanent just reminisce for the moment you don't do the same thing on the other end and then we can at least string the bow up and see what we're at and when something for the string to grab on to now when I do this I just use paracord usually for my tillering string and I'll just tie a loop in one end of it and go ahead and drop that into my nock point just like that pull it down twist it over a couple times so it holds just like that and then I'll bring the other end of it up to the top and just tie like a timber hitch in that and I'll usually try to give myself just a little bit of brace height when I do that by stepping across the bow and put my thigh right in the center of the bow and bringing this limb in toward me a little bit and then I'll just tie a crossing timber hitch in there to hold it while it's on the tillering tree I know let's make sure that that will come out when I want to I put the loop in the end of it now once I get that done I've got to make sure that I'm in both Knox so I didn't get one of my NOC points deep enough to hold that string I didn't get it twisted over enough then I top just that's the point I'll take it off there right now and get it up on there and get it right as I don't want it slipping when it's on the chilling tree now I can look at this bow right now just by stringing it with a little bit of brace light and tell that this limb is weaker then this limb because they're not bending the same this ones depending real good right here and this one's not so that tells me this really isn't ready for the tillering tree yet because when I pull down on this on the Tillery tree I'm going to get an uneven Bend right off the bat right here but for sake of demonstration we're gonna take it over there and show you how that works okay I want to walk through this with you real quick and I want to show you what I've got set up here what I've done is I've just taken a couple of twelve penny nails and nail them inside of this tree and set my bow on top of that then I've come down to the bottom here and I've put one more 12 penny nail in right here and just tied a cord around the tree and I've put a loop in that cord right there with a tie office and put my carabiner in it then I ran that cord up and around and over the top of my bowstring in the center and back through my carabiner so that now when I pull on it it creates a pulley system and if I keep that in the center of my bow and I keep my bow centered on the tree when I draw it like this now I can look at that bow from a distance and I can see how it's bending and you can see I've got a lot more bend in that limb then I've got in that limb okay so that tells me right there I've got work to do because I need to take more meat off this limb to get it to bend evenly like that limb is that limbs pretty good I got rid of that hinge and that was our hens Lim and I got rid of that the Sutherland was one of the knots at and I was worried about that not giving me an even tiller and right now I don't have it even tell her I want that into the bow and that ended a bow at the same distance in Bend when I've got this thing drawn okay and I've got this thing drawing pretty good right now I probably got this thing at about I oh I don't know 20 to 23 inch draw that's pretty good considering we haven't anything but used an ax on this bow yet so let's let off of this and we'll take it off the tillering tree and we'll see if we can get that limb straightened out okay let's talk real quick about axis in the middle this video it started raining again a little bit so I got this tarp for a couple minutes here let's just wring blow-by and usually I'll carry two tools to use for sharpening with my ax I carry a broken-off fine file and I carry my plants keep up sharpener and it's just wrapped in a cloth and it's coarse on one side fine on the other and all I'll do with that ax somebody asked me if I sharpened dis axe while I've been making this bow I have not this is actually the first time it really doesn't need to be sharpened now I'm doing it for sake of demonstration doesn't need to be sharpened there's this ax a wetterling's ax will stay sharp for a long long time that's why I use the lighter ones act so won't bend this camera down a little bit here nope greens not affecting the film too much as far as the noise goes but all I'll do and a lot of people will tell you that you never sharpen this way I always do I don't know it works for me what works for you works for you but what I usually do is I'll just set that axe up and I'll grab with my hand and I'll sharpen toward the blade and I keep my hands away from the blade on the bottom I use my finger and my thumb on the top of the file to guide it so I keep the right angle and when it comes to axe deal you're gonna know when you put that file on there you'll be able to tell how hard that steel is when that axe goes across that blade or when that file does across the play that axe and I can tell you that there is a world of difference between this steel and this axe and it's steel in a True Temper axe or that marbles number nine those things feel like mush against this file I mean I just feel like this file just eat them away and the wetterling's does not feel like that you have to struggle to take shavings off this metal with this files and that's what you want then you know you've got a good hard axe and I'll take full of five strokes across that keeping my maintaining my angle and then I'll flip it over and now I'll come back this way a couple of times just to knock the burr off and then I'll file this away and then usually what I'll do is I'll stand it up on end like this for a final sharpening and I'll rotate it like this try to maintain my angle all the way and then the other side I'll do the same thing I'll just rotate it and I freehand it all the way I know there's any kind of guides and it doesn't take very many strokes this file to get this blade nice and keen and sharp again and things like a razor blade right now now as far as you know final grinding goes that's when I use the puck for in the puck I usually use for dressing the edge instead of the file once I've got a good edge on it I'll just use the fine side of that puck and again I'm just maintaining the angle freehand and massage that with my palm just like that his circles and I'll do the same thing with the other side of blade

and you'll get the feel for it after a while you'll know what the right angle is you'll be able to feel it on the ass and that just gives me a final dressing on that edge and I can tell whether the axe is sharp or not just by feeling it and that axe is like a razor blade of course I'm sure you've already seen that I've been working this bow so that's the tools are all using the way I sharpen my axe there's nothing magical to it it just takes practice in doing it we kind of get the feel for when you're doing it right when you're doing it wrong it's pretty much that soap okay guys still pouring down rain but I want to show you I tied just bow off on the tillering tree because I wanted you to see it it's a lot better than it was we have a problem right here because of that not in the limb that's causing this to want to hinge a little bit right here I already had a little hinge here I've gotten rid of a lot of it I can take some off this fade and a little bit more off this fade and that will fix a lot of that it's not looking too bad on the tillering tree right now it's not horrible and it's drawn now remember that a 22 inch draw let's get back underneath some cover here for a minute talk about it okay so you saw water out on the tillering tree out here in this bad weather now I understand that number one we don't have that most rung to true brace line so that changes things as far as the draw wait that bow is right now is not the true draw winter what it would look like if we had a scale on there if we put a scale in between there whatever number that was reading would not be a true reading of what that draw weight was at 28 inches because we don't have the boat strung to true bray sight with a non stretching cord like some b50 bowstring or something like that the 550 cord that we're using has some stretch to it so it's not going to give us a true reading on top of that our stave is wet so we're still not gonna get a true reading or a true even a true tiller with the wet state so we're gonna take this thing down off the tillering tree put it inside the spider shelter hope for better weather tomorrow come back out and try to work on it again I'll get this segment posted up for you guys so you can see what's going on then we'll go from there

I appreciate you guys views I appreciate your support and I appreciate your comments thank you very much guys