Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Primitive Skills => Topic started by: ekalavya on November 20, 2015, 09:11:10 am
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"Cheap" tubes made of plastic, copper and other metal are already avaiable ....
I make my bows myself , so why not my blowgun ....
The first idea which came to me was making it like barrels, old wooden buckets and so on ....
splitting the dry branch free sapling into eight parts .... removing the sharp end and glueing
and wrapping the pieces together and thus having a octogonal "tube" ....
however later it came to me : "this might be stupid or impractical" ... because there is no historical
evidence for that ..... so this would be an untraditional way ... but two pieces of wood should
be right
later it came to me again .... maybe the first wood blowgun were burned and smoothened with
tar, pitch or beeswax or what else was avaiable ....
anyway all descriptions i found (i did not find that many) say it is a lot of work and a bow together
with quiver and arrows is less work , weighs less and requires less wood
i am also not sure if a blowgun really requires good quality hardwood or if the wood does not
need to have the same qualities as bow wood
also there is no "Traditional Blowgun Bible" ... so things for blowguns are different
And this is exactly why I am asking you there , because people who build wooden blowguns
on the northern hemisphere exists and they have experience
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I'd imagine bamboo would be the thing to use
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I just Googled "Cherokee Blowguns"
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Large River cane is the way to go. I've seen it split length ways, cleaned out and smoothed. Then put back together with hide glue and wrapped with thin rawhide strips.
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If Wikipedia is to be believed they're illegal in CA, MA and DC which surprised me...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowgun
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River cane or the large invasive stuff that looks like a 20ft cornstalk (Arundo Donax?) woks well, also Japanese Arrow Bamboo or really any other member of the bamboo family will work well. Also, elderberry shoots work too but be warned, the stuff is slightly poisinous and must be dried thoroughly and a mouth buffer added so as to ensure you don't get sick from the wood.
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if i made one out of bamboo or cane instead of splitting it, cleaning nodes, then glueing and wrapping i think id find a long steel rod the same diam. i want for my darts. heat it up till it glows red, shove it down the tube. keep doing this until its done.Tony
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So you all prefer bamboo or the better american rivercane.
I guess I will try. As plan B i thought of using a plastic tube surrounded by wood and
filling free space with asphalt, pitch , tar or some kind of wax. However working with asphalt, pitch
and tar would be new to me.
@TrevorM
I am sure a tube is still legal in those states. So unless you make a mouth piece or blowgun darts
it should be legal in those states too. it can not be that you have to remove your water pipes
and can not use a shower any more , because someone claims those are or could be used as
weapons.
It is even possible some metal tubes/pipes are used as primitive firearms , zip guns, samopal and so on.
They are not under gun law and matches are not ammo, although they could be used as such.
Also the possession of tobacco is legal, although deadly poison can easily be made out of it.
The odd thing is that this prohibition might be even against the US constitution for decades when not longer.
As i remember the US constitution says "all citiziens have the right to wear arms or so" .... this was even extended
to automatic and semi-automatic weapons. So a gun barrel is legal , but not when you blow a dart through it.
Although when you use precompressed air form another source it would be a primitive air gun or air softgun and
that would be legal. So together with a trigger , a plastic bottle , a pump and some isolation it would be perfectly legal
in those states too.
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Just what I was thinking. It seems like one of those almost pointless laws where unless you got a really dumb cop or were doing something you shouldn't anyway they'd never bust you for it. Still something to keep in mind for anyone that does live in one of those places I guess.
It's funny, when I was a kid I'd make them out of old pens and shoe laces with pins in them for darts. I was breaking the law and didn't even know it ;D
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I believe the Cherokee's made them the way Tony describes. The first one I saw was made that way by Jonathan and he had it at PatB's first Camporama. We were trying to shoot darts with stone points through it.
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The following is from wikipedia, but "Weapono Masters" had an episode where Mike Loades travels somewhere and makes a blowgun with one of the aboriginal tribes.
essentially they start with a small tree, cut it in half, hollow out a tube in the center, then put the two halves back together again.
I'm sure it can be found on youtube.
Weapon Masters
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with Weapons master.
Weapon Masters
Starring Chad Houseknecht
Mike Loades
No. of seasons 1
No. of episodes 10
Release
Original network Discovery Channel
Weapon Masters is a television show that premiered on the Discovery Channel on December 31, 2007 and on the Military Channel.[1]
Hosts Chad Houseknecht and Mike Loades, a weapons historian, choose a different historical weapon each week. While Loades explores its history—often traveling to the country from which it comes to interview modern practitioners—Houseknecht attempts to improve on it using modern technology (for example, a pneumatic device was added to a blowgun in one episode). At the end of each episode a challenge test of the new version is held.
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@Caveman.
Thank you for mentioning the "show". Usually they try to omit how it is exactly made or what troubles
you are going to face when you try to make one of your own.
What they show in some minutes , can take days of doing and days of asking other people,
thinking about how to do and so on are not even mentioned.
Also quality is important. As with bows , a ten or 15 pound bow is easily made compared to a quite durable bow with 45 or more pound of draw weight. In the same way a blowgun which is merely a roughed out peep hole with light coming in from the other end will not be suitable for hunting.
(the elbow long elderberry tube i made is something .... not deserving to be called a blowgun)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJBpkz29-DQ
This is a clip from a short film called "sunset over selungo". The guy just makes a blowpipe and then some poison darts.
Benas
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River cane or the large invasive stuff that looks like a 20ft cornstalk (Arundo Donax?) woks well, also Japanese Arrow Bamboo or really any other member of the bamboo family will work well. Also, elderberry shoots work too but be warned, the stuff is slightly poisinous and must be dried thoroughly and a mouth buffer added so as to ensure you don't get sick from the wood.
In the UK children have been making whistles and blowguns from elder since forever (Shakespeare mentions it in one of his plays) - if it was poisonous then presumably they would have stopped?
According to the Woodland Trust elder is thought to derive from the Anglo Saxon 'aeld' meaning fire, as they used the stems as bellows to blow air into the centre of a fire. It doesn't mention physically blowing down it but I'm not familiar with Saxon pneumatic technology ::)
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I think it could be difficult to find cane, arundo donax or bamboo long enough and with pretty constant internal diameter.
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I believe the Cherokee and probably others made blowguns from river cane.
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Discussion is that a long rod was used. Heated on the end and burning through the nodes. using the steam to straighten the cane.
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i made one as a kid- although i did use some store bought lumber- hollowed out with a half round chisel- make sure to keep the edges crisp- so that when it goes together it is a perfect circle- i used a template- then sandpaper on a dowell. when i glued it back together i put some "reflex' into it, to counter the sag over 6'- so that it was straight when i shot it. i marked the mouth piece- with a notch that fitted against my septum so i always had it in exactly the right spot!
i used the pithy core from dried dahlia flower stems- made awesome stoppers- you can also wrap a ball of cotton woll- and tie it fore and aft onto the dart.
i even managed to shoot a fish with mine( made a thin mono filament line gizmo for it)!, and birds.
my nicest darts had heads that were as broad as the caliber- so that they exited correctly! as a kid with lots of time i simply carved them from a shoot and carved in a wooden head- drilled the end and put a small nail in.
good luck-
that sure brought back some memories! :)
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I've often wondered how, with primitive materials and tool, they got the inside smooth enough so the fuzz on the darts wouldn't hang up? Wax maybe?
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i am guessing here, but in the Amazon, they probably used a hard wood- that could burnish up quite nicely. being a rain forest i dont know how they stopped the water from raising fibers- maybe a wax finish too.
i had Daniel Mannix's book "a sporting chance" as a kid- awesome book- detailed all the info, from hunting otters with dogs, to hunting fish with otters, hunting with bull frogs, shark harpooning, bow building. blowpipes etc etc
was my bible as a kid!
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I've seen Matt Graham make by splitting bamboo in half lengthwise, then cleaning the inside out so its smooth throughout. Glue and/or wrap it back together and away you go.
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I've seen Matt Graham make by splitting bamboo in half lengthwise, then cleaning the inside out so its smooth throughout. Glue and/or wrap it back together and away you go.
If I did that there would be bits of glue on the inside that would grab the dart. :-[ :-[ Do you know how he dealt with the taper, or is the fluff flexible enough t make up for it. The only blow gun I've made was at work when the boss was on holidays. We used a cone instead of fluff. It made a good seal but I don't think it would tolerate taper. I've got some bamboo about the right size. Maybe next time I'm choked with tillering I'll try one. It's the only way I'll satisfy my curiosity.
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search youtube for "Making A Blowgun: Life In The Amazon Jungle "
there's the entira process
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Thanks, that was good although it kind of petered out at the end. It showed the construction of the blowgun well.
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you can push through and brush clean a piece of bamboo or arundo with a thinner, pointy piece of the same material. i've done this plenty of times for making flutes. Replace the thin piece if necessary and work from both ends.
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Another vote for river cane. Traditional material for cherokees and is still used today.
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Eastern Woodlands Nations (Cherokee, Choctaw, etc.) made blow guns from rivercane approximately 3.5' - 8' long, 1" diameter by putting hot embers down the opening to burn out the nodes. Care must be taken not to allow the embers to burn through the side of the rivercane. Rivercane and bamboo can be straightened with heat just as wood is but be careful not to char the cane over open flames.
Instead of embers, I use lengths of allthread to knock out the nodes and rough sand the inside of the cane. Bar stock can also be used but then you need to wrap sandpaper around a piece to smooth the inside of the cane.
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BTW: I sharpen one end of the allthread and heat it to a glowing red to make it easier to go through the nodes. It should be the proper diameter to go through the smaller end of your cane and at least half the length of your cane. You can go from each end to get to middle.
As for darts, you can use any hardwood stick thin enough to make a dart from. Sharpen one end and the thistle down around 2-4" of the other end. The thistle down should be thick enough to just for in the smaller end of your blow gun. The length of the dart will depend on the length of the blow gun.