Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: willie on March 08, 2015, 07:57:29 pm
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We often generalize about wood qualities for bow making by choosing species, but the right growing conditions can be a large factor in what makes a good bow. Maybe even more so than selecting by species.
What growth conditions make for good bow wood? Wind? Water? Altitude? Sunlight? etc..etc.
thanks
Willie
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Very little sunlight, with a high tree canopy for straight wood. And growing conditions suck in Florida for Osage. :)
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You ain't kidding. .. we're in a desert down here.
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As mentioned above, a good canopy or similarly, a fairly dense woods. This tends to discourage limb growth and spread and often yields a straighter trunk. I've cut a lot of good, straight hickory, ash, white oak and some elm under these conditions. However, I thought I had hit the jack pot a couple years ago when a friend let me cut a nice, big, straight osage tree out of a virtual forest of osage. After I got it home and split it yielded a nice amount of now semi-famous 32 ring per inch staves, which neither I nor a couple other bowyers have been able to chase a ring with any degree of success.
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Hrothgar
I see that wide rings does not always equal strength (at least in osage). was that wood heavy? and was the site dry or well watered?
willie
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Willie, this grove of osage is on top a small hill in N. Missouri. The average annual rain fall here is around 33-35".
At the time I didn't really notice the wood being any heavier or lighter than some osage trees I've cut about a mile away.
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Where I live we have more rock than soil. I use primarily Osage and pretty thin rings. I think it's pretty good wood and others have told me the same.
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I agree with wood growing under a thick canopy (or at least growing under a thick canopy for the first few decades of the tree's life). I also prefer species growing at the northern extent of their ranges as this seems to make for very thin early growth rings, and better growth ring structure overall. I'll take 32 rings per inch on any wood over thicker rings, as long as the early to late ratio strongly favors late growth. So Hrothgar, if you don't want that 32 rpi osage send me a pm and we can talk trade!
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I want my hickory growing in a dense forest for a limbless trunk.
Osage needs sunlight and good genetics. Some patches of osage yield consistently tight ring stuff, move over a few hundred yards under the same growing conditions and the osage may have wide rings.
I used to sprout a lot of osage saplings, the variation of quality tree to tree was apparent at one year old. Few and far between were the arrow straight saplings.
If osage was a valuable wood on larger scale, people would be rooting cuttings from the prime bow quality specimens to sell to the bowyers of the future.
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I've been told that it's the ratio between early and late wood that makes the difference.
In ring-porous woods (hickory, ash, locust, osage, oak, ...) early wood (Spring wood) is the early very porous wood the tree makes to let juices flow again rapidly from roots to leaves, allowing bud burst and leaf expansion. Buds are nothing but miniature leaves and shoots, ready to expand. It just requires pumping them up with sap to allow enlargement of the leave cells. This is what this spring wood is for. This also means that spring wood takes a nearly fixed or at least minimum proportion of wood (relative to the volume of the crown of the tree), but the downside is that it has low density (consisting mostly of water-bearing channels), and is therefore rather weak.
Latewood (summer wood) is wood being made after leaves have expanded and photosynthesis is at its peak. This wood is much denser and therefore stronger. The thicker this summer wood growth, the stronger the wood. The thickness is determined by how fast the tree can grow, which depends on availability of light, water (if there's shortage) and nutrients. So I suppose you get the strongest wood on rich, well-drained soils with plenty of light.
Still, if you have plenty of light on all sides, the wood will bud and grow on all sides, and you don't get knotless straight staves. So in order to have straight staves, you want competition for light on the sides (thereby avoiding lateral bud burst), or you have to prune side branches regularly in order to coerce the tree to grow tall, straight and without low bifurcations.
In conifers, however, early wood has a different function. Early wood is also less strong, but it is less clear what determines how much early wood is laid down compared to stronger late wood. There, the strongest wood comes from slow growing trees with very dense growth rings, which also yields denser wood.
In diffuse-porous hardwoods, the situation is rather unclear. There it seems medium growth rates (whatever that may be) yields the strongest woods.
But in the end, it's average density of a log that will dictate strength. I have seen some very fine-ringed black locust of higher density that broad-ringed specimens. So how to pimp density through growth conditions, I don't know...
Joachim
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Eric, I sent you a PM.
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You ain't kidding. .. we're in a desert down here.
It seems that way, but we've actually got quite a bit of species that'll do. Black mangrove (protected), Seagrape (protected if native and beach break), pop ash very nice bow wood, Snakewood, buttonwood, and remember that most trees that flower or fruit tend to be bow wood if you find a straight piece...citrus, guava, mulberry, carrotwood works, bamboo grows like crazy down here. I understand that most of the flowering trees planted for county landscaping falls under the "Ipe" generalization. A. Pine, of course.
Supposedly, slash pine comes in at .80 specific gravity. I'd be curious to see how that works. Natives made bows from cypress.
There have got to be many more.
We don't have the "standard" bow woods, but I'd bet that all in all, we've got more than anyone else. Just sucks that the Osage doesn't grow!
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I'm not to location specific when bow wood hunting....I'm just looking for good clean healthy straight stuff...also bark is a good indicator of its growth rings some times....if it has a large girth for having young/immature bark it will have nice rings,and vice versa if it has mature or almost mature bark and a small girth then I'll stay away from it if its ring porous wood.
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You ain't kidding. .. we're in a desert down here.
It seems that way, but we've actually got quite a bit of species that'll do. Black mangrove (protected), Seagrape (protected if native and beach break), pop ash very nice bow wood, Snakewood, buttonwood, and remember that most trees that flower or fruit tend to be bow wood if you find a straight piece...citrus, guava, mulberry, carrotwood works, bamboo grows like crazy down here. I understand that most of the flowering trees planted for county landscaping falls under the "Ipe" generalization. A. Pine, of course.
Supposedly, slash pine comes in at .80 specific gravity. I'd be curious to see how that works. Natives made bows from cypress.
There have got to be many more.
We don't have the "standard" bow woods, but I'd bet that all in all, we've got more than anyone else. Just sucks that the Osage doesn't grow!
Steve... if mango will make a decent bow then i am in bowyers heaven... :laugh: :laugh:
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I've always kept a eye out for that one special tree (stave). And I've cut and split to many to remember when I was younger.
Even though I kept a eye out I'm sure like most of you cut or get whats available.
If you find a tree, it's there because the climite and terrain suits that tree.
I can say we have lots osage. WINDY HILL SIDE, COW PASTER TREES are small tight ring and your lucky to find a set of billets. I've looked at 1000's. Tree's closer to the water has nicer rings(thicker). If it's along water the rings everytime will be 16 to 3/16. I have 3 that had 1/4 rings.
I've made several bow with just 2 rings. I made 1 bow that had just one ring.
Hill top or on windward side. Will have tighter rings.
At the same time if osage comes up say in a old orchard or a over grown fence row the tsaplings will grow straight reaching for the sun. We also have those 100 year old trees. The biggest one I got 58 big 4" WIDE 80" long.
I've havn't paid any attention to other woods and there groth patterns.
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Thanks for all the observations. It seems that density is a better indicator of strength than ring count, and there is always that preference for minimal branches.
I live in kind of a desert also, the far north where all the hardwoods are diffuse porous.
In diffuse-porous hardwoods, the situation is rather unclear.....So how to pimp density through growth conditions, I don't know...
my question exactly.....
Eric,
I also prefer species growing at the northern extent of their ranges as this seems to make for very thin early growth rings, and better growth ring structure overall.
Do the better bows come from trees that have smaller canopies, that as Joachim suggested, might not have the unwanted thicker early growth rings? Do you think that elevation can substitute for latitude when looking for trees at the extent of their range?
Crooketarrow,
you have compared the conditions that I want to look at more closely, but I cannot tell which you prefer for your bows? Do you like the wider ringed stuff?
Blackhawk
what is your preference for diffuse porous woods?
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Trees that have larger canopies will have thicker growth rings, for example an osage in a forest that has it's crown open enough to spread will have great growth rings. If it is shaded and under more dominant trees it will have very tight growth rings. A trees leaves are like solar panels, if they don't have many leaves they simply can't grow fast and make wood.
As someone mentioned, a tree out in the open will have many limbs and knots, a forest grown tree will be straight and tall, but to have good growth rates and thick rings it must be competing for sunlight.