bow wood questions

[anasazi]

Has any one ever tried using Russian olive  to make a bow what about plumb or tree of heaven ( a variety of sumac i believe) 

[beetlebailey1977]

I think the Tree of Heaven would be to light and brittle.

[Kitsu]

russian olive and silverthorn can make a bow, but they arent my thing, as for the other one, sumac is brittle.

[blackhawk]

I've seen fine bows made from all those species...they just need to be designed right

[tom sawyer]

Most all woods can make a bow, but the necessary design might not fit your preconception of what a bow looks like.  Lightweight bow woods might make something like an ELB, thicker and long.  Brittle woods are going to need to be wide limbed and extra long as well.  It basically depends on what you are willing to call a bow.

[anasazi]

I am currently building what i believe is called a flat bow out of the plum the only other bows on my list to make are the holmguaard and a short bow i may also be able to get black walnut, maple and aspen we have pine also but i have herd it doesn't work all to well.

[DarkSoul]

Run a search for any unknown wood. It's really simple...just enter the wood species in the bar and a whole list of topics magically appears!

All woods can make a bow, IF you design it accordingly. That being said, there are many woods that do not want to become a bow. From good to worse, this would be my list of the species you listed:
Maple, plum, walnut, tree of heaven, sumac, aspen, pine.
I don't know where Russian olive would fit in, since I don't know much about that species.

[anasazi]

Has any one else had a problem with plum cracking or splitting when working with it

[DarkSoul]

Plum is notoriously difficult to dry. It like to check during drying.

Or is your plum cracking in a different way? How would it crack when you work it? Are you tillering it, and do you see the cracks then? Or were the cracks already in the wood before you started working it?

[anasazi]

It twisted a bit when drying so i need to steam it and straighten it before i tiller it but some of the cracks showed up when it was drying others started showing up when working the wood down i get to do it with what i have which is basically just a hatchet and a farriers rasp i had to stop with the hatchet pretty early because of all the splits and cracks one almost went to deep which would change the whole project.

[anasazi]

I started the plum bow back in November with cutting the tree down and have been working on it nearly every week since with what spare time i have. I took a piece of the tree of heaven and spent two hours on it and after another 45 min it should be just about ready to tiller.

[killir duck]

you can make a bow out of russion olive but it is a pain in the  rear to work it is the toughest wood I've ever used. it's really hard to find a straight piece long enough for billets much less a stave and also really holds on to moisture somewhat like hickory in that respect. it also doesn't bend with dry heat very well steam works a bit better but still not very good. good luck

  Duck

[Bryce]

My Plum gets 2 years of seasoning, that's how I solved my checking problem.
Might me a little much. But then no worries!
Have you tried placing a wet cloth over the checks for a day to see if they close up?

[anasazi]

I ended up using a rasp and just filed down past them i had plenty of room to work with but i didn't want to take a chance of loosing the stave to any checks.

I have a piece of Russian olive picked out the strait part is about 7 or 8 feet long and i think it is about 12 to 16 inches in diameter it will take a chain saw to get anything out of it ( i know not to primitive)  but i should get several staves out of it.