vertical grain is stronger than horizontal grain

[George Tsoukalas]

i've made board bows from all 3. So they will all work equally well. I do prefer rift or bias. Jawge

[Jim Davis]

Jim D. -

Nota bene :

On May 21, 2014 at 3:00 a.m.  I had an unexpected stroke : my left carotid artery was completely blocked and no surgically (or otherwise) intervention was possible.  I was 64 years of age.

I had to learn how to feed myself & to walk & to talk & to write, etc..

The struggle continues to reprogram my neural context . . .

& reading and writing  to this day.

regards,

Scyth

Kudos on the effort you have made and continue to make!  Seems that even with your difficulties you are functioning better than a whole lot of folks

[Selfbowman]

Brad it started out at about 47# I think. The back was a single growth ring. I would have thought it would have taken more set. Back to not all wood created equal. And yes record breakers don't come out every time no matter how good a bowyer you are. Sure is nice when you get to wrk on wood like that. I just finished a bow from a 25 year old stave . No knots straight as a arrow . Great piece of Osage . Made the bow 68" long 2-3/8 at fades straight pyramid. The bow took about 2" of set. So well seasoned wood is not always best. Arvin

[Jim Davis]

The original post of this  thread noted that the wood core of fiberglass bows was oriented so that its back and belly were edge grain because that was the strongest orientation.

But overlooked was the fact that the core of a bow limb has almost no tension or compression stress and mostly has to resist shear stress. So, that would indeed be the best orientation for uniform resistance.

[bradsmith2010]

yes I agree that some woods may be stronger with certain orientation,,
but most the time I think a solid one ring back is best for self bow,,,,or will give best odds for success
I have been making bows a long time,, and the accumulated knowledge from other guys as well has shaped my opinion,, probably a mere hundreds of years or so of bow making experience all together,,keep in mind that in the last 20 years the sharing of bow making experience has raised the level of wood bow making dramaticly,,  and I think one of the reasons we dont see alot of edge grain bows,, keep in mind,, not everyone post what they are making,,,I would say most do not,..and the orientaion of wood in a fiberglass bow,, really does not relate to wood bows that much,, I have made them,,I enjoy making all wood bows,,, I think you will see with the level of bow making now, that what is giving the best results consistantly,, is what most guys are doing,,
and it is not that much different from what the Native American guys were doing all along,, they had thousands of years to figure things out,,most of there bows were flat grain, or most of the bows we can see now,, for what ever reason,, but I dont think it was just tradition or accidental,,
or lack of being open minded,, thats just my thoughts,, from making and studying bows for the last 30 years,,
  I have a friend that has devoted his career as archieologist to Native bows and arrows, and he tells me what we can see now,, is a very small percentage of what existied in the last thousands of years,, there is really alot we dont know,, and may never know..
   I learn something almost every week here,one key point I think is important is that with edge grain as back, you have a mix of early wood and late wood,, that could weaken the back in some species of wood,, and that some have a better ration for a edge grain back,, I never really thought about it like that ,, and was a nice realization for me,, as always I like to learn something,,
   I just knew that back in the day when I made alot of edge grain bows,, I always rawhide backed them them to compensate for the run out,, that that I felt might compromise the life of the bow,,

[Stick Bender]

You made a good point about edge grain and run out , any body that has done any amount of mill work making edge grain lumber or lams will tell you the difficulty in finding pipe strait wood to give you a full length edge grain stave with out run out  , thats why you will see most glass bowyer scarf joint 36" lams together , there are plenty of glass bowyers using flat sawn lams as core material as well, including me , you here a lot of theories in the bow building world some times by people that dont make many bows
 That at face value you think is good info but actually building the bow and finding out in real time can be different then whats being said really the only way to find out is build the bow thats really what its about any way !

[willie]

stick
I make edge grain stock from a board that is split.    2 halves of a 3/4" glued together work out good for 1-1/2" wide

just align the split edges together and rip the lams from as close to the split edge as possible. sometimes I can find a decent board in the stack at the store that is already split and get it for a discount

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[Stick Bender]

 Thanks willy I don't usually make lams over 36" other then for BB type lams so I don't have issues finding stock I was referring to longer staves & longer clean natural grain , you could also rip to narrow slats and re glue them and re mill them as action type wood for a stronger lam yet at a slightly heaver mass !

[Artus]

Allright gentlemen, I got some first results. To shorten it a little bit, I skip the part about what I‘ve done and how I got to the result.

Here we go:
When splitting a log, no matter if large or small, it’s almost impossible to get a perfectly smooth splitting surface, to be used as a back right away. One can really see the disturbed fibers, where chips got torn out from the splitting and left groves. So I gotta scrape it and this is maybe already half the effort to chase the ring. So in that point there is no real advantage, compared to the common way.

The next point that could be an advantage is, that you can get a perfect rectangular crosssection from small logs. But logs that can benefit from this are rather small and hence hard to split straight through.

But for my feeling it is faster to rough out the bow that way. I have to admit here, that I‘m also trying to make a bow completely outside with minimal tools. Some kind of an anthropological experiment, I wanna feel how our ancestor bowyers used to do it.

By the way I used ash. Maybe maple works better for this. Elm is definitely not suitable.

[Morgan]

Why would elm not be suitable? In a quarter sawn situation, I would think the intertwined grain would help it hold together in the chance a splinter raised.

[PatM]

Why would elm not be suitable? In a quarter sawn situation, I would think the intertwined grain would help it hold together in the chance a splinter raised.

 He was referring to splitting, not sawing.

[burchett.donald]

 Morgan,
              Here's an example of quarter sawn Elm... Tough as nails... http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php/topic,52218.0.html
                                                                                                        Don

[PatM]

Yep, but note the detail he mentioned that eliminates Elm from a practical standpoint.

[burchett.donald]

    Morgan mentioned a quarter sawn situation and I was just answering him...
                                                                                                                     Don

[PatM]

  OK,  but hopefully he gets the other detail.