Skill: Nail Arrow

Alright, so you heard me gripe about breaking arrows. Tonight I repaired one of them. Here's the story. Two days ago I was reading a book of mine called "Making Indian Bows And Arrows The Old Way" when I saw a picture of an arrow that had a nail as its tip. I thought it was pretty dope so I decided to make one with one of my busted arrows.

It was actually very simple. The first thing I did was drill a whole in the shaft.

Sorry for the out of focus picture.

After that, I prepared the nail by sawing it in half and filing down the non-pointy side so it would fit into the hole.

On top is an original nail and the bottom right is the finished tip.

Then I inserted the nail and wrapped it all up with artificial sinew. This will keep the nail from splitting the shaft or coming out. The last thing I did was put some beeswax over the sinew to keep it from unraveling.


I shot the arrow a couple times and it is pretty nice. It is definitely heavier at the tip then a normal hollow tip. I'm not sure yet how the arrow will handle on a longer distance shot. I'll probably make some more of these at a shorter length. Shooting it is kind of like shooting a nail gun, except this baby can go about 200 yards.

My bow is still coming along. I'll probably have another post about that soon.