Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: kiltedcelt on November 21, 2013, 09:18:15 pm
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So today, I spent the better part of the afternoon/evening working a on jig to put tapers on bow blanks made from regular lumber. Long story short, I realized I don't like making multi-lam wood bows. All of this power tool usage, jigs, tapers, etc. it's all too much like "wood engineering" rather than bowyering. I feel like it's a mere step away from making fiberglass bows. It's too much engineering and formula for my tastes. I would rather just make bows using plain old wood staves using nothing but hand tools. So, with that in mind, can anyone direct me to some online retailers or members here selling staves? I'd go for just about anything at this point, but I think since I don't have a whole lot of experience making bows from staves, I'd rather start with white woods I guess. I have an osage stave that is a bit of a character stave that I've been working off and on for a few years trying to chase a ring. The stave is not the greatest, so I tend to try working it for a while then I get frustrated and put it away for months at a time. Anyway, any suggestions on folks selling staves (at hopefully reasonable prices), would be greatly appreciated.
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Check out Carson at Echo Archery.
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Where do you live? Are you able to cut your own wood?
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yeah man! Hand toosl and stave. That's all you need! Pretty soon you'll forget about taking measurements and foolishness like that lol >:D
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ADB,
I live in Chicago, Illinois. Cutting my own wood is pretty much out of the question. All the wooded areas are pretty much part of Forest Preserve District of Cook County. They seriously look down on people "removing" items from the preserves. A couple friends got busted by rangers for digging ramps. I can only imagine the load of trouble I'd be in if I tried to cut staves and carry them out. Unfortunately, I'm stuck buying staves that someone else has cut.
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Echo archery is awesome. Carson is amazing to work with.
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Check out Carson at Echo Archery.
+1
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I know Cody(missile master) has gotten permission to cut invasive species from forest preserves in Illinois not far from you...he's harvested a ton of European buckthorn, so maybe there isn't any left..lol :laugh: but seriously they want that stuff eradicated ..now go do your homework in where to locate some and getting permission
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If you can, try out hickory. takes a lot of abuse and comes back for more. easy to work, and usually pretty easy to find. I started making a board bow, it just got boring for me so I have it half done sitting near some staves and just cant seem to pick it back up when there is a gnarly, twisted, knot filled stave next to it! Not condemning board bows in anyway, just cant seem to feel the same magic as a tree I cut and split myself.
PrimitiveTim: I was a little worried that everyone else was measuring an I was the only one just drawing on wood and hacking it out until it worked! :D
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Blackhawk,
Thanks for the info. I sent a PM to Cody to see where he's going and who he's been talking to. I was told a couple years back that even though it was invasive I wasn't allowed to go cut any and if I was caught I'd be prosecuted. That's bureaucracy for ya.
Matt
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Ya know I'm a firm believer in the don't ask don't tell method when the occassion arises... :o waif for a full moon and don on your ninja gear son 8)
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Blackhawk,
Thanks for the info. I sent a PM to Cody to see where he's going and who he's been talking to. I was told a couple years back that even though it was invasive I wasn't allowed to go cut any and if I was caught I'd be prosecuted. That's bureaucracy for ya.
Matt
If,,,,
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If you can't do some selective pruning without being caught it's time to hung up the drawknife. >:D
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There are a couple of literary references to "...the pilfered stave..."
My best bows have been from bummed/filched/pilfered/reallocated staves...
Just sayin'...
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I went a long time hunting staves online, even bought a few off the bay. hit the woods close around the house here and really never found anything worthwhile to cut. Of course you live in the "concrete jungle" so its a little different. But I really buckled down these last few months to hunt for wood! Man did my efforts pay off. I have 5 different species of bow wood at my disposal now. As a plus I located a good source of a couple of those species. When hunting season isnt going on its wide open for harvesting!
My point is this, if you have woodland near you, get out there in it. If you aren't sure about tree I.D. then get you a book to take into the woods with you. Moonlit nights are a plus too! ;D
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I can't believe you guys are boasting about STEALING wood off someone's property. It is obvious none of you own any property and have "0" respect for anyone who does.
I own a little patch of woods and would give you plenty of bow wood, all you would have to do is ask. Steal my trees and we would be going to court.
I wouldn't share a campfire with any of you thieves!
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This doesn't surprise me. I have a couple of neighbors that are like this.
Stay away from my 80 acres >:D
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I don't feel that I have stolen anything Eric. My most recent wood was obtained from a logging patch that was going to be pushed into a pile to be burned! Why let good wood go to waste? And I did ask the logging crew boss for permission before taking the wood I got! Another trip I found a mulberry tree growing wild on public land. I only harvested one branch from the tree so that the tree would not be killed! My other staves have come from either logging brush piles or public hunting land.
I appreciate your moral values and have great respect for you for them, but please don't accuse me of being a thief because of how I obtain my staves. I have never gone onto private property without the owners permission and cut their trees. And I never will. But will I go onto public land and take a sapling growing among many of that species? The answer is yes. I'm not clearing the woods of a species, I'm not taking old growth trees, and I usually will only cut a limb so that the tree may continue to live! But if I'm camping out on public land and find a nice looking sapling then it will prolly wind up going home with me.
I ain't mad at you Eric, I just don't like being accused of something that I'm not. I don't like thieves either. I think our views are derived from our individual perspectives, and we are all gonna have differences in that regard.
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It takes very little work to find bow wood no matter where you live. Put an ad in the paper that you want to buy standing hickory or osage for $100 a tree. I guarantee your phone will be ringing off the wall. You may have to drive a few miles to cut wood but the opportunities are there.
For your $100 bucks you can usually get between 20 and 30 staves from a 12" to 14" hickory tree or less than $5 each. Osage, it depends on the tree, even if you only pick up 5 staves from and average osage tree you are way ahead of the game. After you cut a tree , clean up the top cut it into firewood and make a good impression on the land owner
I contacted landowners when were clearing lots in town to see if I could cut the osage, the answer was always a resounding YES. Before I quit acquiring osage I was turning down trees that friends relatives were removing from their property, I had more wood than I could handle in a lifetime.
Bottom line, get off your rears and start establishing a wood supplier network and stop stealing the stuff.
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I can't believe you guys are boasting about STEALING wood off someone's property. It is obvious none of you own any property and have "0" respect for anyone who does.
I own a little patch of woods and would give you plenty of bow wood, all you would have to do is ask. Steal my trees and we would be going to court.
I wouldn't share a campfire with any of you thieves!
If I was anyone else coming into this conversation I'd ignore this post and skirt around it....this is how fights and arguments are started online....anytime namecalling and pointing fingers hiding behind a screen no good becomes of it....jus saying is all
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Let me get this straight stickman, sometime you steal wood without permission and sometimes you get permission and obtain wood in the proper manner.
Looks to me you just confessed to what I was alluding to.
There are no gray areas where honor is concerned and that is the last comment I will make on this post.
One more thing, Blackhawk posted just before I did. I am an old guy, just turned 66 and have made some significant contributions to the bow making public over the years. I believe traditional archers and bow makers are, as a whole, head and shoulders above the general population as far as ability, honor, honesty and responsibility goes, I want to keep it that way. We have to have standards and maintain them. You do something less than honorable and I will call you on it, it's called maintaining the standard. No hiding behind the computer screen for me, I will tell you the same thing to your face and have a bunch of times to guys I meet who brag about questionable activities. Finger pointing, hogwash, read some of the above posts about obtaining wood, these guys are pointing a finger at themselves.
Now, all of you less than honorable men, go ahead and send me nasty PMs, call me obscene names and accuse me of singling you out for ridicule like you have every time I stood up for what is right, I will not respond.
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ADB,
I live in Chicago, Illinois. Cutting my own wood is pretty much out of the question. All the wooded areas are pretty much part of Forest Preserve District of Cook County. They seriously look down on people "removing" items from the preserves. A couple friends got busted by rangers for digging ramps. I can only imagine the load of trouble I'd be in if I tried to cut staves and carry them out. Unfortunately, I'm stuck buying staves that someone else has cut.
That is not true I guarantee you there is people tht own property somewhere around you you may have to drive out of your city to look for wood gotta do what ya gotta do and ask property owners if they will let you harvest some wood I've never been turned down one guy even cut it for me and asked for nothing in return
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If Im gonna steal it? It better be peeled and sealed already! Watch your piles at the summer shoot's fella's!
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If Im gonna steal it? It better be peeled and sealed already! Watch your piles at the summer shoot's fella's!
Go ahead and take it...I got too much already and it would be helping me out...and I won't flip out and say I'm taking you to court if I caught ya....lmao :laugh: :laugh:
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Wasn't suggesting that he cut from a woodlot in a back yard. However every piece of land up here is festering with Buckthorn that is supposed to be eradicated if possible and yet there are areas where it is illegal to remove material.
All the conservation areas here have some sort of vague warning to watch out for Buckthorn as if it might attack but no reference as to what is supposed to be done about it. I know there are none of the conservation authorities actually out there doing anything about it except putting up signs.
The forest preserves around here are filled with managed pine forests and it is also illegal to remove material yet the log skidders go through and crush and mangle the understory of HHB etc.
Am I removing material in these cases without being the equivalent of a petty thief? You bet.
Consider it us exercising our inner Robin Hood.
To this I would add new building developments or road expansion. If you saw huge piles of prime Maple being fed through a shredder, you'd become a low life thief just like us.
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Alright ladies, I looked where he is from and it is chee-cago. So am I and I have access to more wood than I could ever want. All you have to do is get away from the burbs. Meet a farmer and they have row after row of osage. I going out in a month or so to rebuild my stash. Pm me and I'll hook you up
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I went last year to the carlos avery wildlife preserve here and asked the ranger if I could cut some wood. He asked what kinds and I named a few. When I hit Black Locust, he said "Oh sure, that is an invasive species up here". He showed me where a stand of trees was, gave me a day pass, and said it was due to be cleared by a crew in about a week so I showed up just in time ;D Accross the street from me is tons of common buckthorn and the land owner up the road was delighted to have me kill some. I did accidentally damage one litle ERC tree and had to put it out of its misery though :'(
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Even though I have enough white oak trees to cut in my yard, I wanted to get some hickory staves. So I ran a wanted ad in Craigslist. No luck there. Then I saw several ads for hickory lumber by local mill owners. I contacted a couple of them and eventually managed to buy several logs for around $100. I got about 20 staves out of them.
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Apologies if my post came across as go steal wood from anywhere. It was not my intention.
There are lots of places I can find wood that is in wasteland or overgrown woodland. I am also aware of places where taking the odd sapling would never be missed and if anything would help thin out and create a more healthy bio-diversity.
I am not talking about cutting down the lovely fruit tree from someone's garden, parkland or plantation.
One end of the scale is taking out a daughter trunk from a neglected piece of wasteland and the other is cutting down a rare tree from a place of special scientific interest (SSSI) or from someone's front lawn!
With the way things are today with insurance and liability you will find the default answer to be no, no matter if the timber would be missed or not, that's just the way things are now.
But to be responsible you have to know what you are doing and take an interest in the whole picture and consequences of your actions, not just legally but morally and environmentally.
"its sometimes easier to seek forgiveness than permission"
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One post and it all goes ugly... dont come in my yard, otherwise start hacking. if your fast enough, and quiet enough you deserve the wood! Its when people start stalking my woods with guns I get a little cautious. but I dont think anyone needs to get on a high horse and rain down judgement on someone for typing out a possible misdemeanor. if you dont like it say just that "i dont like that idea" other than that skip over the post or give some helpful tips instead of attacks. I myself would not have anywhere near the experiences I have had if it were not for scandalis little adventures. you grow, you learn, you do what you can. lets lay this beast to rest and get on with the real info!
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Happy to hear you are wanting to make some real bows. I agree with others that you can still find some local wood. I worked in Northern Illinois, Grayslake area for a summer doing bat surveys in those buckthorn infested forest preserves. I remember keying out a huge number of tree species, many of which would qualify as good bow wood, in some of the more mature forests. Not encouraging you to cut without permission on forest preserves, but there are a number of those remnant forest patches out there and not are all county forest preserves. Try knocking on farmhouse doors, and if you have a bow, show it to them, that usually opens up the conversation.
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IMHO we might as well stick to stave bows. Once you start to make laminated bows, you would be tempted to compete with fiberglass bows. Even if not, using modern power tools and glues would make us compete with manufactured laminated bows. Not that anything's wrong with doing so, but I would rather handcraft bows instead of manufacturing them. I'm considering giving up my bandsaw and starting to use a froe more often. Afterall it's a lot easier to split wood than to cut it.
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I have only dabbled with lam bows in a very low key way since I have no tools to speed the process but definitely my heart is far more in stumbling on or seeking out the perfect HHB or Elm stave.
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Once you have a couple of stave bows under your belt (or skirt in your case), you will wonder why you fooled with lams for so very long! Congrats on making the transition, the de-evolution, the great leap into the past, call it what you will.
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I'm in your area also Kiltedcelt. I'm sure I've got a couple staves I could spare also to get ya started. Between Paul and I you could be scraping on a stave bow before thanksgiving if we're able to meet up. I'm out in Aurora, I'll send you a pm.
Greg
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You might try posting that you need staves in the trading post and list some things you would be willing to trade. Just trying to give you some more options.
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Wow! Lots o' chatter on this thread since earlier today. For starters, I live in an apartment so I don't have a ton of space. Sure, I'd love to have 20 staves, but I just don't have anywhere to put them. At the most I can probably store half a dozen or so staves while I work on them in a little workshop my building manager allows me to use in the basement. I'm not so hot to get my hands on staves that I'm gonna sneak around in the dark like a ninja or try to sneak out of a forest preserve with a couple cut logs, even if they are invasive species like buckthorn. I'm content for now with trading for staves or buying a few here and there. I'm not going to comment on the debate regarding larcenous acquisitions of bow wood. That wasn't the point of this thread originally nor is it still the point. I'm looking for retailers with reasonably priced staves or members here with staves they're willing to part with or trade for, provided I have anything that anyone else might want. And thanks Badly Bent, and Paulsemp - I'll PM da both of youse guise (Chee-ca-go speak) and see if we can work something out.