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Knots and Sinew on Juniper

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Marin:
Hey ya'll,
I was curious about this topic as I have gotten conflicting answers. I am roughing out a Utah juniper stave for an Ishi/Pit River style bow. I harvested the stuff two months ago myself. The wood seems fine, though there is a "character" spot near the center where it sort of swirls due to a knot that was on the side of the branch, but as I am sinew backing it I think it should be fine. My question was this however: there are a handful of rather sizeable knots in the stave itself. They are not massive but they certainly are not pin knots. When sinew backing, is there any special treatement one should give knots?
I would think no, and I have inspected enough old bows myself to see that many of them have some knots in them and it seems they were just often ignored, though almost all of them were yew and not juniper.
I did however see another post on this website that suggested you should leave more wood on the belly, something I do with self bows but I haven't seen with sinew backed bows
http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php?topic=30471.0

And still another seems to suggest that if not properly dealt with, a knot can be fatal to a sinew backed bow
http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php?topic=52307.0

Bascially, what do ya'll do with knots when sinew backign? I've attached a pic of the stave I had so far to help clear up what I was describing earlier and am now curious if I should even continue with thinning and then the more time consuming process of preparing sinew for this bow if it is a lost cause. I've backed two bows before but have had them fail eventually for differing reasons, the second being the wood wasn't very good quality to begin with so I just want to rule that out.
Thanks for the help!

wizardgoat:
To be honest I try and avoid staves with knots when I want to build a sinew backed bow, just because of the time and materials involved I want the bow to have the best chance of survival.
For juniper, and yew, I’ll flatten the back and shape it how I want for the sinew backing.
For juniper, probably better idea to leave the knots on the belly a
Bit proud. If the knots are in your handle area just leave that area a bit stiff as well

Marin:
Thanks,
I did flatten the back, although since this is an Ishi style bow, it's more of a rounded back. I did however even out the contours caused by the knots, because that's what I saw in the originals. Do you still think however these knots are too big to make this stave useable?
Another issue I was running into was I had a major "swirl" in the middle, caused by the fact the branch I harvested this from ( I took this stave just from the top of a large branch) had a major knot on the side. I thought I could get around this, but looking at it, even if Iheat straighten this portion and sand it down, does the amount of grain runoff that would be present mean it would still not be good enough with a sinew backing? This is sort of related to my issue with knots, like if sinew backing can make up for grain runnoff or cutting through a lot of fibers on the back
I've attached some pics of the knot swirl I was talking about

Marin:
Also should note, I am plaiing inf straigtening this with heat (if I deciced not to start over with new wood) so there is a lot of deofrmation still in this stave. I am just trying to see if its worth going through the process of straightening and backing this if this stave just really isn't that good for a sinew bow.

bradsmith2010:
its hard to tell from the photos,,shape the bow to floor tiller and see what you think,,,
maybe make the bow a lower poundage bow,, and not draw it too far since the stave seems questionable,,

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