Recreating Legolas's Iconic Bow: DIY Project

to me this archery scene right here was the most epic of its [Music] time and after 22 years it's time to make a replica of legal los' bow legal Los actually shot different bows in different movies today we will focus in on the Lord of the Rings The Two Towers there's three big things we need to look at how long should the bow be how heavy should the draw be and then what type material do we need to get the design accurate after scrubbing through every single archery scene I found this one near the end of the movie that will help us determine the length of the bow so first we need to pause the clip I'll bring a line in and measure the length of the bow with that line and then compare this line to the height of legal Los and since this line comes up to his ear there's probably 4 in above it making this bow being 5'7 Or a 67in bow next is the draw we of the bow here is where we start to get a little iffy check out this this clip you can see by how much the string is oscillating it's a really light poundage bow and check out the second clip that's exactly when I saw it here let me go frame by frame this is a PVC bow at least that's what it looks like to me which makes complete sense for movies it's a durable material it's easy to decorate and it's light poundage for the talent to act with today I'll make a wood bow rather than a PVC bow and see if I can decorate it similar to this Elvish style bow archery and movies need to look cool it doesn't need to work proper L I'm going to try to build a bow that looks cool and works properly lastly the bow style now the movie hardly shows the bow without action this makes it difficult to know what the bow looks like in depth but by pausing the movie in as many places as I can you can tell that it's got a slight recurve with non-bending glm tips also the Bow's kind of brown like a log and then near the handle it has this cool wood looking material so today we're going to duplicate the look but we're not going to duplicate the functionality because we're going to use a different kind of material to make it a more powerful bow with that I also want it to look cool like the movie so I'll probably paint the bow maybe even adding some material and character to make it look like this wood rustic design 43 he was already dead if you'd like to go watch the movie right now you can but for the rest of us we first need to select material today I'm going to use bamboo and Hickory these are two super solid types of material that will work great in this bow and I'm using four thin pieces because a thin piece can bend but a thick piece can't so by bending these four pieces while I'm gluing them together I can shape this bow like the one in the [Music] movie [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the beginning of a good bow starts with a form a form is what we're going to use to create the shape of the bow the bow is only as good as the [Music] form [Music] to laminate these pieces together I will use ea40 it's a two-part epoxy that is fantastic for making bows [Music] [Music] all [Music] see what we can do here think we can cut all this off guys that's what we need to do now now I could finish the bow out just like this but I'm going to add more material so we can get the look that we get in the movie so let's add some more bamboo four or five pieces to either side of the handle we'll be able to round this to give it that log like natural rustic shape that it is in the [Music] [Applause] movie [Music] it can be difficult to make something that looks cool and that is functional so my strategy is to go look at the movie clips and then go back to boow building and then look at the movie clips back to bow building and continue that process so that I can have a picture of what I'm actually building I will have to compromise a little bit to make this bow functional because if I made the bow as Round And as thick as the movie it would be a 100 plus PB bow with the type of material I'm using with that I still think we can make this look really really good so let's shape the bow [Music] now [Applause] [Music] [Music] when building a bow there's this term called tilling this is the process of actually getting the bow to bend properly so it doesn't break and so that it shoots great it's the part of bow making that's the most nerve-wracking this is what makes the bow [Music] [Applause] [Music] what [Music] [Music] now that the tillering is done it's time to add a little bit of character to this bow we've got the recurved tips that aren't bending we've got the handle that's not bending but has all this extra material it's time to carve it and I'm going to use this Dremel tool to try to create a bark like character to this bow now if I do this on the part of the limb that's actually bending it's going to change the functionality of the bow which we don't want to do so I'm going to do this to the parts of the bow that aren't bending [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] now it's time to paint it I'm going to paint this bow with many different layers so that I can scratch and sand off individual different layers after all the paints on to get different character so let's start with black and then we'll go to Gray and then we'll go to White so if I scratch a little bit off I'll be in Gray if I scratch a little more off I'll be in the black that way there can be a little bit of depth to this bow and even after I paint the white on I think I'm going to use an acrylic paint to mix different colors together maybe add a little bit of brown and green in there the bow in the movie changes colors based on the color grading of the movie so in some scenes it kind of looks green whereas in other scenes it looks Pure White and that's because of the color grading of the mood of the actual scene so I'm not sure what the real life actual bow is like but I'll just make a version that will fit in one of the [Music] scenes [Music] [Music] other side boom Bullseye what a shot mission accomplished I think it turned out pretty good it was hard to get it to look exactly how I wanted it to look but overall not too bad for a replica plus it shoots fantastic thank you a ton for watching today it's been a pleasure to make this video if you want to see more like it stick around and I'll see you in the next video Stay shadowproof my friends