Wood bows in extreeme cold

[George Tsoukalas]

Nope, I don't. LOL. Just average. Now for the fourth time...just kidding. Jawge

[Jesse]

Thanks George but are you sure?   Sailor I could help you with the testing to lighten your load. If you just send me half what you receive. Also send me the ones that make it and I will re test them in WI. to be fair fair
Yup Dragonman getting older. Not getting old yet but definitely getting older.

[ricktrojanowski]

Jesse
I can't imagine anything that I would do outside at those temps.  I get cranky if I have to hunt below 35 degrees.  If our season didn't start in Oct, I probably wouldn't hunt at all. . 

[shamus]

Wind chill reading only affect living things. Nothing to do with bows. I've shot selfbows in 0 deg F temps. Never shot yew in anything under 40 deg F though because other bowyers have reported mishaps in the cold with yew. Jawge

Agreed.     

 

[hermitking]

The issue of bow durability in extreeme cold is something I could experiment with.  I live in the interior of Alaska.  Right now it is about 40 below.  Often we are hovering around 20 below during the mid winter months.

I have seen samples of Athabascan bows in the University of Alaska Fairbanks ethnology collection.  They almost always used birch for a long straight self bow.  They only braced it about 4 inches and had the string rest on a block of wood tied to the handle, thus the bow was almost completely unstressed until actually drawn.   I've made sleds from birch and can affirm that it has some special cold resistence properties.  Birch trees are often subjected to extreeme temps and wind in the Arctic North and can handle the cold very well.  As  Bow wood it seems rather weak and developes string follow easily, but it is about the easiest wood to steam bend that I have ever encountered.

The Inuit (eskimo) bows are also often made of Birch but more severely stressed when strung.  The cable back probably increases durablility in the cold by taking up some of the stress and shifting the nuetral zone away from the belly.  I saw one sample that had rawhide strips laid on the back and then secured by bibache lashings and the cable back.   Both of these native hunters lived off of the bow and if they were not able or willing to hunt in below zero temps then they would die of starvation.  I conclude that Birch is a good cold weather wood for bows, provided that one protects the back from splintering.   I would suggest a sinew backing, or gluing on some layers of rawhide.  In a survival situation I would probably use a rawhide cable backing made of squirrel skins on a long, mildly recurved birch bow.

I read an artical in Primitive archer about a guy who hunted musk ox in the far north with an Osage orange flatbow at 40 below.  The bow dispatched the beast but the shooting fingers were freezing up fast.

I plan on trying a winter moose permit  with a Birch bamboo sinew recurve and snow shoes.  But that is about a year away. 

I think the best sollution is to drop everything on warm days and go hunting then.  40 below can be life threatening.

[otis.drum]

jesse,
i think the boo backed bow would be fine. what is the belly made from? one tip is to keep the bow excercised. while your out there, and especially before you shoot, do multiple short draws (12-18") working up towards your draw length, this works the limbs. this is something i do evrytime i pick up my wood bows after not shootin them for a while, but it is especially important in the cold. i never draw a wood bow to full draw with letting know i'm about to do so.

however, i have never seen temperatures like what your talking about...and don't want to. i would have sat it out inside by the fire with a flask of port, gloves, beenie, and wingeing like a baby!

[hermitking]

Actually the belly would be bamboo, the inner core birch and the back sinew.  I thought I would try the combo because birch is free for me, and the only viable bow wood growing here, bamboo is cheap on the internet, and I have enough sinew to back a lifetime of bows.  We sometimes get to mopp up the road kill moose.  One moose could give enough sinew to back two bows.

I like the cold and the never ending arctic wilds.  But to each his own.

[Hrothgar]

An interesting discussion going on here, and I'm curious too. I know the bow is/was used year around as far north as people have been able to commun. But to play the part of the devil's advocate; theoritically, even a seasoned bow is going to retain a degree of moisture, anywhere from 6% to 15%(?). When the moisture in the wood is exposed to extreme temps, it will expand and freeze. The bow might still work, but a person shouldn't expect the same limits for durability and performance as under less extreme conditions...right?

[dismount]

my humble opion is osage. It has natural oils in the wood, but in -30 weather, even that may be risky.  Dismount

[Marc St Louis]

I have kept track of this thread and I will add my 2 cents now.  I have found that bows that are tension strong to be good candidates for cold weather use.  The reason is that extreme cold will sap moisture out of wood and repeated use in cold weather will dry out a bow after awhile.  Even so I have had one Elm bow pull a splinter in cold weather, this is after using it for many days in -20 degree weather.

[Bentstick81]

  I always leave my bows in a unheated garage. I thought that leaving them unstrung, and in the cold would be better than taking them in a 68-70 degree house, causing them to condensate. But after reading this, maybe i need to take them in the house. One of mine has been in the cold for 3 years. Mine are hickory, and red oak board bows. The three year old hickory is a little tougher to draw when its cold . The problem i have is with knirk nocks breaking, sometimes after one shot. When i use all of them up, i'm going with the regular snap nocks. Them seem to handle the cold better.

[Jesse]

Thanks. looks like the way to go is to just keep the time spent in sub zero to a minimum and make sure it's a tension strong bow to start with. I would think the bamboo backed bows would be ok but I wonder about the glue/epoxy in those temps. FG bows dont seem to come apart in the cold so it should be ok.

[otis.drum]

thats an interesting question jesse. i'm not sure how different glues handle extreme cold. they don't like too much heat. i wonder if there is anything written on the glue package or if the manufacturer could enlighten you?

[hermitking]

some more thoughts on extreeme cold come to mind after reading your posts...

Somebody mentioned oil resins in osage.  I have noticed that extreeme cold does weird things to oils and petro based chemicals suca as synthetic glues and plastics.  It seems that some natural and man made oils change in extreeme cold, I mean actually change chemically.  An oil that jells up around freezing temp (32F) will get even harder at extreem sub zero temps.  This may actually affect the oils in bow woods somehow. I am not sure what actually happens chemically but it seems as though some oils break down in very cold temps.  An example is cold weather drop cords for plugging in car block heaters.  They use a plastic insulation shell on the extension cords that has extra oils in the plastic to make them more pliable in extreem cold.  After laying around unmoved for a winter or two I noticed that the plastic started to develope brittle spots and cracks even if it had not been stressed the cold.  Regular drop cord plastic developes cracks really bad in really cold weather.  So cold has some effect on oils.

Someone also mentioned glues.  I use natural glues when bow making simply because it is easy for me to get (knox geletin is basically hide glue and found in every grocery store).  But in the eastern countries they often use fish bladder glue or glues made from various parts of fish.  I have been told that fish glue is slightly stronger than hide glues and other geletin like glues from animal protein sources.  I also noticed that fish bladder glue is slightly less brittle than hide glue when really dried out.  My point is that some glues are simply more elastic than others.  I would bet that fish based glues are more elastic in the cold than land animal glues like hide glue.

I suggest that someone experiment with  sample s of glue in deep cold for elasticity

[hermitking]

The way one tests glue elasticity is to smear an even coat of glue on strips of paper, let them dry and then do bending tests of samples.  The samples must be the same thickness, totally dried, and of the same length and width of paper strips. You could bend them over the edge of something such as a table edge or edge of a board, and measure how much bend before the sample cracks.  Keep a written record of what angle and bend the breaks occur.  Then one does these tests at differing temps.

It is pretty simple but I trust my animal based hide glues in extreem cold.  Mongolia is extreemely cold and their bows used fish bladder glue.  They often hunted in winter so it must have held up well in cold temps.