Bushcraft crossbow bolts and arrows 

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.

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.

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!

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.

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🔥

I love this series, would love to see you attempt different types of "bush craft" weaponry! (bigger/smaller crossbows etc)

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.

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).

A bush craft trebuchet, now that I want to see!

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.

I truly appreciate when you admit your boundaries of knowledge AND refer us to other sources. - 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.

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.

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.

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? 🤔

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!

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

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!

As it turns out i knew almost nothing about arrows! Great video!

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.

This is unspeakably awesome

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

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.

Coming soon: Bushcraft Survival Trebuchet

Making bushcraft points for fun. Great! If it’s surviving, more likely you’ll find some man made waste easier than those natural materials. Glass, ceramic tiles + flint knapping. Old rusty nail, screws and other bits of metal. Hard plastic or laminate… Interestingly native Indian tribes do the same - use found or stolen modern materials for bow and arrow making. Nice video Todd. I always love watching your experiments. You’re clearly having fun with your work. Which is joyful to watch.

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

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.

I realy like your workshop hoody :) True signe of a real working man

Love Bushcraft!

Not sure what's more impressive, the arrows, the bow, or that "Robin Hooding" with the arrow-on-arrow action.

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

I appreciate the "thesis" at the beginning of this.

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!

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.

Very interesting, love the variety of heads and fletchings...

For birding you don't even need points, you can use blunts. Bit of rock or anything with enough mass for a good whack.

9 seconds in and already smiling....thumb is up :D you realy are a 18 year old kid with lots of exp

This is a great series. 👍

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.

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

I really love that you test your toys on your dinner.

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

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 really like these bushcraft crossbow videos. They've made me rethink a lot of the stuff I thought I knew about crossbows!

Excellent approach! Thanks for sharing

Hey Tod i replicated ur crossbow came out good

Some sweet arrow heads Have always liked all of the crazy wooden arrow heads made for shooting birds, by different tribesman around the world

I love this. Better than movie behind the scenes. Better than interview. Just pure joy!

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

Thanks for showing the nice video of thr hand crafted arrows.They seem to really sharp.👍😀

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.

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.

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

I've always had questions about how to hunt in a survival situation. Really appreciate this series!

Back again in the comments, just to tell you, how awesome your content is!

This is insanely practical advice. Todd knows exactly how to make a perfect crossbow, but that isn't the goal at all.

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~

Awesome diy and videos...what a joy. Thanks!!!

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.

YOU MY FRIEND. ARE AMAZING

Love TWS and Survival Lilly.

Always good fun on your place

Excited to see he bushcraft trebuchet :D

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.

Fun and educational, as always!

Always fun to watch & learn 🙏💪🏹

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.

Amazing work

More video's of bushcraft bows please.

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 🙂

Looks pretty powerful, bush to knee! XD

I like this guy.

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.

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.

Fantastic video

ive once fletched an arrow with pine needles in my youth, and was shocked to see how well it flew

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?"

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.

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.

Nice, Tod reminded me of Survival Lily, haven't seen what she's been up to in a while!

Thanks for sharing 👍 Suprised you didn't try knapping some flint.

I love the channel so much!

Tod all these exotic glues. Can you make a video comparing these ancient ways of fastening?

I really enjoyed this videos showing us the basics

A straight shaft has always been important for successful bush craft.

Lots of fun and a good learning experience from you. Thank you!

Todd, you're wrong, it's pretty fucking brilliant!

put 2 round rods in your vice. makes straightening much easier when you can look down the shaft

I once made a crossbow from some abandoned skis i found when I was 15. I had so much fun with it until the coating exploaded and send shrapnel into my arm.

Anyone else get a minor giggle at “I’m gunna heat bend my shafts now” ? 😂

I see that there is some debate on the merits of fire hardening wood. With some folks saying that it is only the lack of moisture that makes the wood harder. I live in the Provence of British Columbia Canada. We get many forest fires here every year. One of the chores of clean up after these fires , is the felling of the still standing dead trees. These trees have been subjected to heat so intense that in many places the very soil has burnt down to bedrock. The wood on these trees is as hard as iron . I have tried to pound a 4 inch spike in and the nails just bend. A sharp chain saw blade has to be re sharpened after cutting only one tree. When looking at the cross section of the cut log , The bark has turned to charcoal , but the wood beneath has hardened. The natural plastic in the wood ,the cellulose has crystalized and become very hard indeed. - so the question must be asked,"Will an arrow point held over a fire get hot enough to get this hard ?"

Could you straighten out the bolts by heating them by a fire, and then hanging them vertically with a weight at one end?

Great fun.

just 9 shots later and just missing by centimetres, I'm well impressed.

You should do a "will it bow" series

03:19 - I present to you the 'Crow Fkr'. It's ruthless!

The different fletching's remind me of Fandabi dozi's survival bow and arrows.

Good video.

We all need a bushcraft trebuchet video in our lives, just sayin'.