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Woods superior to osage
PaulN/KS:
--- Quote from: Bob Barnes on June 10, 2025, 02:13:00 am ---Paul...I will save you a spot. I had planned to wait until the next anniversary, but I actually found a small travel trailer and I plan to be there. It is always hard to miss our family reunion. :)
--- End quote ---
I hear ya :OK.
I'll be bringing the Scamp so we'll have the tiny trailer trailer park at the top of the hill. ;)
organic_archer:
One of the fastest bows I ever made was from fire-hardened Chinese elm sapling. I’ve got four fresh staves of it that are as straight as boards and really looking forward to them being dry!
I’m a huge fan of Hackberry. Similar in properties to elm. Light in physical mass, has no commercial value and takes over farms around here so it’s easy to get permission to cut as much as you want, and usually grows pipe-straight. With a good heat treatment it’s not difficult to get 165 fps out of good hackberry. With careful design and an aggressive treatment it’ll do 175 fps no sweat.
It’ll handle just about any design you throw at it. From Holmegaards to Ishi paddle bows to heavily-radiused longbows. Of course some designs are more “optimal” than others, but I’ve made a couple hundred bows with rounded at lenticular cross sections with it by now and they don’t disappoint.
If I was forced to choose only one wood to use for the rest of my life, it might just be hackberry.
bassman211:
Elm is the best white wood for me for making bows. American elm is what I have at hand, so it is what I use. If Chinese elm is superior it would have to be one hell of a bow wood.
Eric Krewson:
For us that live in abundant osage country it is hard to try something else when you have a few hundred seasoned osage staves
ready to go.
I have only made a few hickory bows, one red cedar, and reworked a handful of other people's hickory backed red oak board bows. I have 4 acres of woods with various species of hickory, hackberry, elm, black cherry, red and white oak and hop hornbeam but have never cut the first stave from any of these wood types on my land to try to make a bow out of. I have cut a lot of hickory off a friend's place to split into staves for my bow students.
I don't have any osage on my land but could easily get permission to cut it off local land that was about to be cleared for development.
Badger:
--- Quote from: bassman211 on June 23, 2025, 11:39:42 pm ---Elm is the best white wood for me for making bows. American elm is what I have at hand, so it is what I use. If Chinese elm is superior it would have to be one hell of a bow wood.
--- End quote ---
Hackberry is one of my favorites also. It is the most steam bendable of all American woods and surely one of the most bendable woods n the world. You can make some very radical designs with relative ease using hackberry. If I ever got another shot at it I would take more time keeping the moisture down. It is kind of hydroscopic.
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