Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: ionicmuffin on August 20, 2012, 11:08:35 pm
-
Any thoughts on a hickory board bow? i may not be able to get strait grain so i have no idea how it will hold up. Im certain someone has done things like this before, plus im itching to make something!
-
Hickory will put up with more grain runout than any other board bow choices, but it still has it's limits. Check out the many links that Jawge posts for his site. He has some great photos and excellent tutorials on board bows!
-
I agree with JW_H.
Try to find as strait a grain as you can and just go for it. ;)
-
You might find a straight grain red oak board though at home depot or lowes, or even menards if you are close to one. I found a straight grain hickory board for 6 dollars at menards, I still plan to either rip it into backings or make a bow out of it. I recommend backing it with linen no matter what it is. ;D
-
I have http://www.kitsaplumber.com/products.aspx I live in kitsap county, so i dont know of any other places carrying nice lumber like hickory, ipe, oak White and red, ect. all in boards.
-
oh also. My spoke-shave broke in half... i am thinking i really don't need it at all. What i was thinking of doing was getting a cabinet scrapper from somewhere and using this instead. I only have a table saw, large aggressive rasp, a 4 way rasp. a big surform rasp, a skillsaw(thing with a handle to change blade direction), sand paper, belt sander, a regular electric sander, and thats about it.
-
I think that tool collection seems just fine for making bows. Add in a good hatchet and you wouldn't need any of those scary power tools :P. A good card (cabinet) scraper would be good to have too. I do all of my bows it a hatchet, a draw knife, a ferrier's rasp, a 4-in-1 rasp and a card scraper. And I'm sure there are plenty of folks that make far nice bows than I with far less than that for tools.
-
Getting a couple of metal files will save you a fortune on sandpaper!
-
You always want STRAIGHT grain on every and any bow, made of any wood.
But you can't always get what you want.
If there is any wood species that accept grain run out better than all the others, it must be hickory. You still want perfectly straight grain, but if you have to work with a piece that has grain run off, hickory is most likely to survive. I have seen some crazy grain violations in finished bows that must have killed any normal board bow. At the same time, I have also seen beginners getting immensely frustrated by repeated board bow failures due to poor grain selection. Sometimes, although with hickory this is less likely, it is better to spend more time on selecting a proper board, than spending all that time on an attempt trying to make a bow out of a piece of wood that is just not meant to become a bow. I'd rather work on a perfectly straight grained piece of red oak than on a severely violated board of hickory. It all depends on how much grain run off there is (even hickory has a limit) and how the bowyer deals with that.
I agree that you probably have enough tools for the task at hand. You might be lacking a tool for big wood removal (such as a drawknife or hatchet), but for a board you'll be fine. I wonder how you got your spokeshave broken in half...it's a hefty chunk of cast iron (steel?), normally.
-
There are 3 important things in choosing a board. First is grain, Second is grain and third is grain. Oh and no knots either. None no matter how small. More on my site. Jawge
http://georgeandjoni.home.comcast.net/~georgeandjoni/index.html
-
Apart from grain (which is number one as George says), with hickory boards stick to white wood. A little brown in the hickory looks good oiled up, but all brown is usually bad (light, weak, sure to crumble). If you heft the piece and it feels heavy for it's size you can get away with some runnout.
-
Drop a cast iron bodied spokeshave just once on a concrete floor and then ask how they break! I had to do it twice before I took my broom and dustpan out to the trash. I now leave a nice thick pile of shavings on the floor to cushion any tool that gets dropped. >:D
-
My spokeshave didnt break frim falling on the floor, i put too much pressure down on the handles...
-
THAT would take a lot of pressure! It probably had a crack or a casting flaw. Wish I knew how to repair them short of brazing.
-
no loss to me! i figured out that they take off WAY too much wood. instead i will be making my bows with a scrapper plus some of the above tools...
-
oh, and just to let you know, i didnt buy any boards mostly because the boards looked like they had taken a log and ripped it into a bunch of vertical boards, and so basically i would have a 10 in board with 2 in of usable material... PLUS they refused to rip it down to just the 2 in...meaning 50$ for that piece of crap.....not worth it to me.
-
Too bad. Hickory is great. You know, it doesn't matter what way the board is cut as long as the grain is straight. You can make a decent 45# bow with a 1x1" piece of quarter sawn. I just dropped one off for a buddy. It was 61" 40# 15/16 wide, 3/4 deep at the handle, 9/16 deep at the fade 1/4 at the tips (pointed with wrapped bowstring for nocks). It even had some runnout. You might want to rethink it - 10 staves is 5 bucks a piece. If I found a straight grain dimensional 1x10, or 2x10 for 50$ I 'd buy it now matter how it was cut.