sap wood of juniper

[Blacktail]

i was going to make my turkey hunting bow out of yew..but i didn't want to cut any of my stave's down..SO,i jumped on a piece of juniper..i haven't worked any juniper so this is a differant journey for me...my question is..i have the stave ruffed out and one limb has a 1/2'' of sap and the other end is 1'' of sap...SO,is there a certain ratio of sap and heart wood...if i remember i think Keenan said he uses 1/3..it will be sinew backed..john

[Keenan]

 John than is right 1/3 sap to two thirds heart is best I think .  However the limb bow that i just posted was about 2/3 sap and one third heart. That is often the case for juniper because the sap tapers down fairly quickly. I think either sap or heart worked well with sinew.  And I do believe Juniper is best as a short flat bow design. looking forward to your creation.  I harvested a coupe juniper staves this morning.  One Limb(6"), One sapling (4")

[crooketarrow]

    It really dos'nt matter what the ratio is if you going to sinew it. The Indains in CA. built there juniper staves short and wide and were just basitly just a form.For sinew to be layered on. They even made there limbs with out tapper. They just built the sinew up where it was needed.

[M-P]

John,   You might look back through some of the previous posts on using junipers.  Different bowyers have different opinions.  I routinely use the staves "as is"  and leave the sapwood alone.  That makes for some bows that are nearly all sapwood, but I haven't noted any problems with performance.   Others have suggested they get better performance by removing all, or at least most of the sapwood.  To complicate matters, many staves have an ill-defined, or even wandering divide between sap and heart woods.  As crookedarrow and Keenan noted a short/wide limbed bow with sinew on the back is an excellent design for juniper and then you can pretty much do whatever you want.    Ron