Hey, what's up guys welcome back for another desktop project. In today's video
We're gonna be making something called a mini longbow.
These little spear slinging devices can be made with materials you may already have around the house.
You can put them together in about 10 to 20 minutes
Materials are going to need for this product very simple and very inexpensive
I just ran down the local Walmart
And I picked up some bamboo skewers some girls hair clips
Some mini popsicle sticks and some embroidery thread you can get the color of your choice
I'm going with yellow
And as far as tools go all you're really gonna need is a hot glue gun and a pair of scissors
Now to get started building our longbow
We're going to need to grab one of these small craft sticks and put a hole through the center of this popsicle stick just wide
Enough to accommodate a bamboo skewer
you can do that in a number of ways you can use a sharp point of a knife and just spin it in circles or
You can grab something like a 9/16 inch drill bit and very quickly drill a hole right through it
And then take two of these little hair clips and give them a small modification
What we need to do is get rid of this centerpiece in the hair clip
And if you just use your finger to press the back of it
You can see it pops up if you grab that and bend it over
You can actually snap it clean off then press the center to pop the clip back and your first piece is complete
Once you've got your two Clips modified
We're going to use a couple of dabs of hot glue on the ends of our popsicle sticks to secure them in place like that
Now while the glue still hot it's a good idea to set it facedown on the table and make sure that the hair clips are
Straight then just give it about 20 to 30 seconds to cool completely
Now hot glue is amazingly impressive and very durable however to reinforce our bow and make a little bit stronger more versatile
We're gonna reinforce these joints with a little bit of embroidery thread
We want to do is start with a very small dab of hot glue just on the
Backside of the popsicle stick and use that as a place to start your strength
You can overlap the string a little bit just to get it started because it's very easy to snip that off later
When we want to do is just get about five or six turns going around to base that hair clip
now eventually we get to the point where that hair clip gets so narrow at the bottom. It wants to slip down and that's okay
we'll go ahead and slip down start wrapping that and then we're gonna work our way from the bottom all the way up until the
Top until we can't see anymore the popsicle stick we're gonna use one more dab of hot glue on the back
to secure the back end of the string I find if you lick your finger and press it down it helps prevent the glue from
Sticking your fingers and helps prevent you from getting burned
Alright with that one done finishing. The other side is just as simple as doing the same thing
So there we have a guys that pretty much completes all of the lashings for our bow
Now we can use some of the same embroidery thread to create the bowstring we're gonna start off with a piece of string a little bit longer than one of these bamboo
Skewers and we're gonna start by looping it through the Centers of the hair clip and then bring it around and looping it back down
Through the hole at the top
Then we're just gonna make a simple overhand knot and use a little dab of hot glue to prevent it from unraveling
And then tie it a second time before the glue cools to help secure it in place
Now that we got one end tied and secure there's important thing we need to do before we tie the other end and that's take
A little string and twist it up to make it a little bit tighter
This will increase durability and give it a little bit longer lifespan then with our string tighten
We're gonna take the other end we're gonna loop it back through the hole at the other end
Tie it in a single knot and then that point. We're going to adjust the actual tightness of our bowstring itself
You can use the table or your stomach just to press in a little bit as you tie the knot and then secure it with
A second knot like you did the other one to hold everything securely in place
So here we are guys at this point our micro longbow is just about complete
We've just got these long strings flipping off the end here
But because they're glued in place and double knotted we can very easily
Snip those off with a pair of scissors and reuse this material to make some silencing tassels for the bowstring itself
You can see I just took those leftover bits and string I tied them with a double knot on the tops and bottoms of the
Bowstring itself kind of in line with the lashings we did earlier
And I snipped them down so they're about a quarter to half an inch long and then just ruffled them up a little bit
So they look like decorative castles that act as improvised dampers for the bowstring now of course these are mainly just for looks
But it's another cool way to use up some of those scraps before they go in the garbage
Alright at this point our bow is finished, so let's go ahead and make some arrows so for these improvised arrows
We're not going to be making true arrows that fly perfectly straight
But we're gonna be making something good enough start off by finding a few bamboo skewers
And it is important to find the ones that are as straight as possible
You see some of them are kind of wonky and jut off angles
We don't want those we want to go with the ones that are as close to perfectly straight as you rotate them around
In the actual length of these arrows are gonna be about the same length as our bow itself
so just lay the skewer over top find the distance and then break it off near the bottom and to help them walk into the
bowstring a little bit better
We can put a little knock in the end which can be easily made with a knife a pair of scissors or in my case
a piece of broken hacksaw blade
Now these arrows are made for very short-range target practice if we wanted them to go longer
We'd actually have to add fletchings to the end which isn't gonna work shooting them out through this hole here
but one little trick that we can do to add a little bit of weight and help keep them centered as they fly through the
Air is to add a dab of hot glue about an inch down from the tip
It's kind of like glassblowing I think you want to keep it moving
Try and get it to settle into
as an aerodynamic of a ball as you can
But of course if you're impatient like me you might just want to stick it on your tongue roll it around a little bit
They'll help dissipate the heat and get to cool down a little bit quicker plus
You can kind of shape it a little more aerodynamically as well
So there we have it guys our long bow and arrow are completely finished and ready for short-range
Target testing and for that we're gonna be using a couple pieces of toast
I just grabbed a paper plate cut a slit down the middle and shove some toast down it to form a makeshift target
And I made up a couple more long bows as well
I think they all look really great
So let's put these things to the test and see how our little micro long bows hold up to the battle at the breakfast table
Bang sweet
Well there you have the guys that is how to make a micro
Longbow that you can now add to your arsenal of desktop weaponry. Thanks for joining me for this project
I'll be looking for you in the next one
talk to you then
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