What's up guys, thanks for joining us today in our previous video
we showed you how to build a body of a crossbow using a
2x4 some PVC for the bows and some paracord for the string well today
We're going to cover how to build the trigger mechanism
And how to build your arrows the trigger mechanism has two main parts
And we're going to be building those out of this 3/4 inch plywood
We also have a couple of wooden dowels and these have two purposes first
They're going to be used as the hinge points for the two pieces of the trigger
And then we'll also build our arrows out of them
We can't very well use our crossbow until it's got a trigger
So let's get started to get some basic measurements for our crossbow trigger pieces. I'm going to remove the two bows from the body
Now I'm able to lay the body of the bow down flat on the table which is gonna make this easier as I said before
The trigger mechanism has two main parts one of them is going to be a sort of wheel with teeth on it on an axle
And that's going to be what actually catches the drawstring when you pull it back
The second piece will be what we actually think of as looking like a trigger and that will be another piece of wood that's on
a hinge that stops the first piece from
Rotating it until we want to I'll draw out the shape of the first piece of the trigger on this piece of plywood but before
I do that I'm going to drill a hole into the piece of plywood
The right size for the axle the hole is going to come first because I need everything else lined up around that bowl correctly
I've got a 3/8 inch dowel so I'm gonna be using 3/8 inch drill bit to match
All right after a quick test our 3/8 inch dowel fits into that hole very snugly
Probably end up sanding down the dowel. Just a little bit to make it so it can spin a little more freely on that axle
Here we have the basic shape of our trigger mechanism the hole will be down
Inside the body of the crossbow this notch down here is where the trigger mechanism
Will stop this whole device from spinning until we want it to
you can see that the notch on top is in front of our axis and
The notch on the bottom that stops it from spinning is lined up with the middle of the axis
I'll do a rough cut to remove this whole block of wood, and then I'll start getting in the details and the curves
There we go, we've got that basic shape cut out
It's looking pretty good
since this little notch is what the bowstring is going to wrap around we want that sticking up above the body of the crossbow I
Now have this flat portion of the trigger mechanism lined up with the body of the crossbow
I'm just going to mark where that hole is
There we have it now. I'll drill that out on the drill press
I'm using a drill press rather than the handheld drill because it is important that the drill hole goes straight up and down as much
as possible
Now it's pretty good
Use a piece of this dowel and fit it through both the trigger mechanism
And the body here just to hold the trigger in place as we measure for the next piece
For all the moving parts to fit together
Well, we need to be pretty precise on how our next trigger piece fits into the first one
So I'm going to use this piece of paper so we can trace the exact intersection of where the two pieces meet now
I've got the paper lined up so the corner fits right into this first notch that was cut
Sort of folding the paper around the body of the crossbow a little bit, so we can tell where the wood ends now
We'll have our main trigger come down just a little bit below that first notch right about here
And we'll have it extend about an inch and a half long right about there
We know that we need our hinge point to be in the middle of this extended piece of wood
It shouldn't matter extremely precisely where but we want the whole hinge mechanism to be behind the first piece of our trigger
That's an approximation for it. We'll go
All right now. We know about where our hinge
Hole is going to go and we know that it lines up perfectly with the first piece of our trigger now
We can remove the piece of paper and finish out the shape of our whole trigger mechanism
I'm going to cut out the piece of paper with the drawing of our trigger on it
And I'm going to use some spray glue to adhere that to our 3/4 inch piece of plywood alright and once again
I'm going to drill out the hole first and then cut the rest of it out
With the first piece attached with the temporary dowel and the second piece all cut out with the hole drilled
I'm going to mark where to drill the second hole into the body
You can now see the basics of how the trigger mechanism is going to work when the bowstring is drawn back and behind this notch
It will be holding pressure
Which is pushing against our trigger?
When we pull our trigger it drops the bottom piece out of the way and the top piece is then able to swivel
Letting our bowstring fly and launch our arrow
Now we have our two pieces cut out and we have the holes drilled for the axles to make them work
But we need them to fit inside the body of the crossbow
Properly haul out space for our two trigger mechanism pieces inside the body
I'm going to use this drill bit to make two holes that go all the way through the 2x4 and then use a
Jigsaw to connect those two that should give us a nice slot all the way across just measuring how far
You need to have space
That should be in front of the first trigger mechanism very back of the second trigger mechanism
It's right about here
And out there so we need to remove a slot about that size for a trigger pieces to fit inside
Seems to be working pretty well
I don't have a very deep plunge depth on this particular drill so it's gone down as far as it's able so I need to
Now raise the platform up so that I can drill the rest of the way through
Build a fair portion of the way through but another problem
I have is that this drill bit is not actually small enough to fit through the hole in the plate
I'm just going to leave this hole started with the drill press and then I'll finish it off with the hand drill
Now I've got these two holes drilled out, I'm going to use a jig saw to cut out the gap in between them
There we have it we now have a hollowed-out portion where our two pieces of the trigger?
Can swivel and function see that the pieces fit through pretty easily?
Got lots of good range of motion there
Everything we want with all of our pieces cut out and ready, let's do a test fit
I've got a couple of pieces of dowel
And I'm gonna sand them down in the middle so that our trigger pieces will swivel more easily on
There we go, that's swiveling just how we want it
Perfect tension on this tooth up here when I pull the trigger
It releases
There we go you can see the string is being held by the trigger
See what happens when we pull
Hey, that's what we want to happen perfect now that we know the bow is working and the trigger mechanism is working
Let's make an arrow and make it fit on the bow to start making our arrow
We'll use a 3/8 inch dowel
To measure the total length that we want it to be from the back of the notch and our trigger mechanism to about an inch
And a half maybe 2 inches in front of the crossbow
I know a hacksaw isn't really designed to cut through wood, but on small pieces like a dowel it actually goes very quickly
They just have to stick the price tags on so well
Now they got the price tag off
Let's add a knock to the back of our arrow a knock is the little gap that fits over the bowstring
Now that I have the knock carved into the wood
I'm also going to sand down the two different faces so that it fits on the bowstring more easily
Now when our drawstring is around our trigger
You can see that at this point the arrow doesn't really have a way to reach on to the drawstring itself so what we need
To do is cut a small notch out of this piece of the trigger
With the notch cut our arrow can now fit onto the bowstring without the interference from the trigger mechanism
With the knot cut I'm just going to quickly hit the rest of the arrow with some sandpaper to smooth it down
One more step to make it slightly easier to use a crossbow as we want to carve a shallow channel
From the front of the crossbow to the trigger mechanism that our arrow can rest in
There we go the knock is cut into our arrow
We've grooved out a little bit of a channel on the body of the crossbow now
Let's add some fletchings or feathers to the back of our arrow now using tape with rubber gloves
It's kind of a nightmare
So I'm gonna lose them for a second as I make the fletchings for this arrow the design is pretty basic
We're just going to take a folded over piece of tape with edges left on it and attach that to the arrow itself
Fold this nicely in half
If we have our arrow fit inside the crossbow the way we want it with the nock pointed up and down we want one of
The fletchings to be pointing straight up
Obviously I have a little bit more tape here than as necessary trim some off
Now that doesn't look very much like an arrow
So let's take our knife and trim it down to smaller and give it a little bit of that classic feather shape to it
We've got one feather on our arrow. Let's add two more on the sides
It's looking pretty good now. Let's add some weight to the end of our arrow
So it will fly point first every time now as a weight
I'm going to try and put this screw into the end of the dowel
So I'm gonna pre-drill a hole and then add the screw now of course it is pretty tricky to drill perfectly straight into a dowel
I'm giving my best shot I
Tried to pick a drill bit that was almost as large as the threading on the screw
So that well, it does still bite into the wood
It's not really pushing it apart any because I think it would just split if it did that
There we have it. It's not the most dangerous Arrowhead to ever made, but that's actually my goal
I don't want to make something that I'm accidentally gonna kill someone with so this will still give it some weight. It'll fly true
It'll Pierce into fairly soft targets, but I'm not likely to really cut anything up
I've marked off on this dowel a couple of spots that are the same width as our
2x4 so when I cut those they should work as the hinge pieces for our trigger without extending to the sides at all
There we go that spins fairly easily just I want it, let's install this
Right
String this back up take it outside and see if it'll fire there we go. We've got our trigger mechanism working
We've built our arrow. We've got a target. Let's fire this thing at it. Oh
Oh
Short get a little bit more loft to it this time since I was a little low before
Shooting into the wind now - that's not gonna help
Ha hit the target again
Take that target almost the bullseye three two one oh
That almost went through a shot I've already taken
See that do that
Just turned into one bigger. Hole Oh
Oh, it's like half way worse
That steam hole again, that's a three-fer I still missed
Bullseye got it ha
Turns out I am NOT very good at archery even with a crossbow all right
We know that our crossbow works our trigger mechanism works our bow works and our arrow works
So I think the last step is going to be decorating this thing to make it look really nice
There we go we've got our crossbow
Fully decorated I used a rubberized paint on the bows
So hopefully that won't crack as the bow bends my wood stained everything that was wood
And I think this looks pretty slick now like we've got nice green wood nice dart boughs this thing looks great
Some of the design of this crossbow was shared with me by my friend Taylor
I want to give him a quick shout out Thank You Taylor there you have it now
You know how to build a trigger mechanism an arrow for your crossbow in a different video
We showed you how to make the body the bow and the strings so you put all this together
And you will have your very own
Functioning crossbow a couple of notes of safety that I hope you've already realized but never point your crossbow at a person or another living
Thing don't point it at things that can get broken or damaged point them only at designated
Targets when you're in a safe area, and you can't accidentally hurt anyone
This is not an ultra-powerful crossbow with a 100 plus pound draw
That's gonna shoot right through a lot of stuff, and it has a blunt tip so it's not the most dangerous
Type of bow and arrow in the world, but it can still hurt someone so if you build one be very careful with it
Thanks for joining us for this video today, and we'll see you in the next one talk to you then
It just pops the foam at leas like assortment of foam cones on the ground everywhere ow
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