so when I was researching how to cut knocks on my bamboo shafts I didn't find a lot of information about how to do this on my own I had a friend who has a little jig and I went to her house and used her jig but I really didn't feel like they were as good as the ones that I make at home there was nothing special about it so the tools that I use to cut my bamboo shafts and this is what it was like all right yeah right there so I use just your everyday hacksaw one blade a lot of people use two or three blades and my friends we use three blades I felt like it was really taking away too much too quickly so I use one blade of that and then at Tractor Supply I saw a set of these that were like five bucks but I picked these up at Home Depot and okay a set of files and I also use this little tiny file it's like a toenail file which is pretty thin just get started with em and I use Emery boards so my first step is I just mark the center of where I want to make my cut with a sharpie right down the middle you can see that I just cut a line right or I just marked a line right down the middle I happen to have these little fealty pads they're actually for corns I picked them up at the pharmacy but I'm sure anything soft and squishy would do but this is what I wrap in the next thing I do is I tape my end because one thing that can happen while you're cutting these knocks in bamboo is just it's its nature to do that is that it'll split and so if you tape it close to where you're going to be cutting or placing your knock that will help prevent that from happening so I'm just using masking tape and I wrap that around many times you know just probably about a 2-inch piece that I wrapped and then I take my little pad here and I wrap that around so that when I'm in the vise I don't let anything so let's say don't want to go maybe I want to go this way because because I want you to see what I'm doing so then I snuck up my vise so it's good and snug hopefully I won't knock the camera and then place my blade right on my mark there it's just do one stroke that kind of gets things going for me that's looking good so far so good if you want moving a little bit so I'm just going to tighten that up just a little bit more I don't like to make my knots too deep because it just makes it weaker a little bit more so I go about 3/4 down the blade the blade width and that's about half a little over half just a little bit more there we go three-quarters down that looks really good so that's it with a hacksaw I'm done with a hacksaw then I take this little nail flat file that I got at the pharmacy it's pretty thin and this will be my first filing down then I do it fits right in there is you know no stress at all and I'm just kind of pushing side-to-side to increase the width of my knot and then as that kind of widened out a little bit here let me flip this around a little bit so you see a little better then I take my little triangle file would be my next step I believe that's right right here it has a triangle three edges to it place that right down in top and that's just widens the the opening where my bow string will go in there we go I don't know if you can see that but it's created a nice little u-shape in the top of my butt my butt my Knock so the next step is I take a little bit of a wider it's the flat file right there and it's a little bit wider than the other file that I was using so and if that feels like it's not going in quite right I might try the emery board that's looking really good basically I just worked the files this one is a little half round mess to widen out the base a little bit now turn this against you guys can see the look there and then my emery board so the hardest file that I end up working with it's my little round file and this is where I like to be able to put it in the base of the NOC where the the bowstring is going to sit and not put a lot of stress on my NOC once it gets through there sometimes it takes me a little time to work this through I don't just like cram it in there because it can crack I'm kind of squeezing my Knock a little bit to reduce the pressure we go in from the back side as well I feel things slipping a little bit there we have it took a while to get that through there but once this through that's great and around my edges a little bit and let's test it and see how the bowstring fits in there one right over here little loose they're a little tight still so I'm going to widen that out a little bit more with my files and it looks pretty good it's getting close a little there we go and it a good fit all right there you have it turn that way nice little knock cut in my bamboo hello so now what I'll do is I will remove my tape and I will wrap it and I wrap it with sinew or thread I have some waxed nylon thread that I got for leather work and that's what I like to use the most but there you go there's that beautiful little knock thanks for watching