Hickory for ELB

[carpenter374]

Hey all. It's been a while since i've been around much. good to be back. i"ve been shooting and building hickory flatbows for a few years. I'm thinkin about trying an english longbow design. i recently shot a yew longbow and i loved it.  i'd appreciate some feedback on anyone who has used hickory for english designs. hickory is a much cheaper wood than yew. lol. I've heard some varying opinions on it in my research so far. is a properly cured hickory stave going to live up to the performance of a yew longbow? i use hunting weight bows (my personal about 70 lbs). thanks in advance for any input.

[Pat B]

Hickory isn't good in compression so keep the belly flatter than a normal ELB style. Also, hickory is heavier than yew and that will affect the performance some too. It will probably take a bit more set too.   Looking forward to seeing your finished bow!

[backgardenbowyer]

I've not made a self hickory, or hickory bellied elb, but I've seen quite a few.  The self bow's I've seen seem to have a bit of string follow and they are not popular here in the UK where laminated bows are preferred.  The hickory bellied bows generally have a central hard wood core and then a hickory strip backing - the ones I've seen have all been at moderate to medium weight - probably not more than 55lbs.  Hickory backing strips on elbs are of course commonplace.

Stan

[carpenter374]

what about heat treating the belly? dunno much about doing that on elb design.

[Pat B]

Heat treating will help but I believe there are better options for an ELB.  Hickory is very strong in tension so as a backing it is very good.

[Simple Hunter]

             
        There are allot of people here who know more about this than I do but from the hickory bows that I have made it seems that it may be worth a try if you kept the belly on the flat side and the back more on the round side.Just a thought but I think a true ELB has more of a rounded belly and as mentioned before, hickory does very well with heat treating.

[Eric Krewson]

The last narrow, true hickory ELB I saw had 5" of string follow.

[carpenter374]

The last narrow, true hickory ELB I saw had 5" of string follow.

wow. maybe that one was a bit too short or wasn't tillered right? been doin more research in the last couple hours. i just got done reading a 4 page thread in the english warbow section on this. seems that it should work fine unless i try to make a very heavy bow (120#+). i was also looking at the hickory bows on rudderbow's website. he sells them unbacked at 72" for weights up to 65lbs and backed with bamboo for heavier war bow class bows. I think maybe 73-74" may get me the desired draw weight up to 70#? Heat treating oughta help immensely from what i can tell. (thank you Marc St. Louis, btw:) if hickory takes more set from being weak in compression than treating the belly should resolve that. Anyway, all is speculation until i make some shavings so i'm just gonna get after it in the next week or so and see what happens. Thanks to all for the input and any more is still much appreciated.

[Pat B]

The deep arched belly isn't the only style ELB. For less compression strong woods like elm or ash I believe flatter belly style was used historically. Make it a bit wider than deep with a flatter belly. Heat treating the belly will improve the compression characteristics too as will the extra length.