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Jaro's new article

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nathan elliot:

--- Quote from: adb on February 27, 2014, 03:17:25 pm ---It must be good wood if it's better than yew.

--- End quote ---

Another member of the plum family worthy of note is Sloe  (prunus spinosa) I have found it has a higher sg than plum and makes a great bow.

Badger:
  I have proably only worked about a dozen plum staves, none big enough for war bows but it never fails to impress me., Of course yew also impresses me.

gianluca100:
I made two light ash warbows about two years ago. Some guys from a reenactment company didn't have the cash to pay for yew bows so I proposed them to make ash bows. Ash is much less expensive here in Switzerland and i have a lot of clean straight staves. It's also faster to process, hence the lower price.

The funny thing is, I worked more or less exactly like Jaro described, making the bows a tiny bit wider and with a less pronounced rounding on the belly. The light toasting of the belly was also the same :)
Both were about 36mm wide at the handle, about 190cm ntn or a bit longer and had around 80 to 90 pound at 32 inches of draw.

Doing a few shots, i could not notice any big difference in performance compared to yew bows, but the testing series was small and I'm no expert warbow archer, I can't draw more than 85 pounds (what a wimp  ;D).

With my 'normal' whitewood bows, they are mostly around 55-60 pounds, I prefer it the other way round: a perfect flat belly and a more rounded (or trapped) back. And as narrow as possible. I feel that this gives the best performance with the white woods. I always wonder if the medieval boywer would also have chosen to go that way, to avoid all the problems with chrisaling and string follow...?

ciao,
gian-luca

Del the cat:
The article has inspired me to do an Ash bow for a guy at the club 85# @ 32"
The Ash is well seasoned (2 years) but is still about 15% moisture content, so I've stuck it on a long radiator  ;D.
I stuck a new blade on the bandsaw and adjusted it up to get a clean cut. I've even used my plane on the stave, a tool I only very rarely use.
Maybe I'll find I like Ash more than I thought...
Del
(PS. I looked at the other articles on the EWBS wesite. They really should remove that bit about Warbows not being of English Yew" because it is too full of moisture" it just makes them look stupid. It certainly puts me off every joining 'em.
Someone should have a quiet word).

brian:
Steady on Del, Saying that the EWBS are being stupid about English Yew, is asking for them to put a curse on all the English Yew bows ,you make to fail at the tillering stage ;)

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