A while ago I went to my dad's hunting camp and while I was there I decided to make some use of the small bamboo that grows in one spot behind the camp. I had some flint that another member of the camp had collected, which I practiced knapping into some arrow heads, which is a hard skill to obtain). I must have broken many more peices of flint than I wound up even getting somewhere close to triangular. Eventually I got a few good looking candidates though.
Then I took a page from this instructables page and used some twine I had to bundle together several pieces of bamboo and used some pipe glue that was laying around to glue together the bundles and the bowstring, which I made from several runs of twine.
I then made the arrow from some turkey feathers and a nice straight piece of bamboo. This was especially nice looking when done and when I shot it out of both my small compound bow and the bamboo bow it went straight and about as far as a normal practice arrow. The bow only went about half as far as my small compound bow, but I was still pleasantly surprised at it's performance. Over the next few days as the bamboo dried the bundles got looser and it lost tension, but it still makes a nice piece on my wall.
I'll definitely make more bamboo arrows, and as a result of making the bow I've been on an archery kick a little and I'm working on an oak longbow now, though my other projects have been keeping that on the back burner for a while now.
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