Juniper Survival Bow
Channel: Dan Santana Bows
Date: 2020-04-25

Get started making bows with a simple ’survival’ style bow from fresh cut wood. Or improve your skills with a challenging piece of wood. If you want a bow in under an hour, you don’t need to let it dry. 

Wood selection is much more critical with higher draw weight, seasoned-wood bows. Almost anything is good enough to make a quickie bow like this. I used really gnarly branches to prove it.

To make a bow—

Take a tree, and remove everything that isn’t the bow.


On the next video, we’ll expand that basic premise into three steps—removing wood, water, and stiff bending areas. 

With each video, we’ll hone our skills and cover more advanced topics in bow-making and archery. As I learn to make videos, hopefully you’ll learn something about making bows. 

In the next video, we’ll make another survival bow, but much more powerful, by slightly drying the wood for a few days.  Ultimately, green wood bows like the one in this video will fail once the wood dries, unless it they get remade. The way I see it, these bows are disposable, short-term solutions. As we get into more advanced builds, we'll discover bows more suitable for long term survival.

If you’ve never made a bow, or done woodworking of any kind, here’s my guide to making a bow in 10 minutes. 
https://imgur.com/gallery/AOxbliG


https://imgur.com/gallery/6eyvMq4
This is the bow I’ve been shooting most lately. I think its the one I would choose if I really had to survive in these woods. This one’s special to me, because the natural wiggles in the wood improved the bow by making it centershot. I’m always looking for unusual and unique staves—they make characterful bows, and are a delightful challenge to the bowyer. 


Here are a few of my latest bows, 
https://imgur.com/gallery/tVsjNI9
https://imgur.com/gallery/6aGN1Yy
https://imgur.com/gallery/KJ6WZtJ


And here’s a look back at some of the bows from my beginnings as a bowyer.
https://imgur.com/gallery/MjOVIie



“Quasi Motion” by Kevin MacLeod is used under CC BY 3.0
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kevin_MacLeod/Global_Sampler/Quasi_Motion
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/



Special thanks to Mick Grewcock, who inspired me to make videos.