Bows and Arrows

Last week I bought a book for Avritt called The Dangerous Book for Boys. I mentioned in an earlier post that it included instructions for making a bow and arrows. That has been the project for the last week. We first went to a friend's house who owns some property with woods and collected some branches suitable for making a bow. Avritt spent several hours shaving the bark off the sticks and cutting off the little knobs to make a spot to hold the bow. Yesterday we finally rounded up all the various parts we needed for arrows. I had a hard time finding feathers, and ended up going to a dollar store where I found an Indian dreamweaver. I bought two for $2, which included just enough for eight arrows. I went to Lowes and bought four 48 inch dowels for 53 cents each. We cut them in half, sawed a nock in the end to keep them on the string, and then attached three feathers at 120 degree angles from one another. That was the hardest part. I almost super-glued my fingers to the arrow. The feathers were curved, and that was a challenge because they had to be straightened out to get them to stay on the shaft of the arrow. Then we struggled with figuring out what to use for the arrowhead. I objected to using metal pointed tips for obvious reasons - projectiles, young boys, and sharp don't mix. I couldn't find anything that was suitably blunt. In a conversation with my physical therapist about it, he suggested that we just use a dremmel or a grinder to make a tip on the dowel, and not worry about gluing anything else on it. I called Mike on his way home and asked him where the dremmel was, but he wondered whether the 1/4 inch dowel would fit in the pencil sharpener. I replied that I doubted it would, but upon Mike's confidence that it would work, I got the sharpener and sure enough, it worked perfectly. We just sharpened the arrows and 5 seconds later had a perfect tip. The tips are plenty sharp, and could do some serious damage to a person, so some safety procedures have been put into place. The boys can only shoot with adult supervision. Our last challenge was a target. We found a pizza box in the recycling, and we stood it up on the ground. The bottom of the box had a small circle shape, so we had a perfect target at no cost. So far the boys have been having a blast. Even Mike and I tried shooting the bow, which was great fun.