Why I think osage is an inferior bow wood...

[Weylin]

. I worked my yew bow and love it but if I went elk hunting I am toting my osage along just because I feel it is a better partner where yew is less dependable and dents and I don't feel it as dependable

Yeah, yew is terribly undependable, especially for elk hunting. Note Bryce's look of shock in this picture is because he was so surprised his yew bow didn't just fall apart when he bagged this elk.



And Gordon only looks smug standing over this huge bull because he backed his yew bow with sinew otherwise it never would have survived to deliver the killing blow.


I'm glad we found out from you that yew is unreliable. Now we can go burn our yew stashes for firewood. What a relief!

[huisme]

Black Locust is my top wood. Fast as a shadow, and only twice as likely to throw me through a loop as Osage- but that works with my goals most of the time including 'be faster than fiberglass' 

[Buckeye Guy]

I love you guys. Finish finals a week from tomorrow! 

Good to hear from you kid !!
Keep up the good work !
Hope you can stop in to see us at Marshall !

[Pappy]

Good to hear from you,you see the issue is still being debated. Good luck on finals.
I am sure you will ace it as long as their are no questions about the best bow wood.
   Pappy

[Pappy]

I don't think anyone said Yew was unreliable. I guess from what I am reading if you kill a critter with a particular type of wood it is King. That being the case I have a pretty long list of best bow woods ,but ha there can be only 1 King. Got to love this stuff.I am just boared this morning. :)Nice Elk by the way and looks like an excellent shot.
   Pappy

[Badger]

   Pappy, there is another wood we don't see a lot of here, they use it in decking sometimes. It goes by beefwood, bulletwood or massaranduba. I really think that would give osage a run for its money if we could get it in stave form. I like the way it looks like raw steak when freshly worked.

[PEARL DRUMS]

Too many "if's" follow other woods around to make them King.

[Onebowonder]

Long ago, smart monarchs learned that nobody can be KING everywhere and decided to start respecting the sovereignty of other royal persons in other contexts.  That is to say, unless he was itching for a fight, the king of Holland, didn't go marching around the central and interior parts of France claiming to be THE one and ONLY true king.  Doing so had just proven to be stupid too many times prior.

So, among the royal families of Bow Woods, perhaps a similar sense of humility and mutual respect might be in order.  In the desert southwest of the North American continent, perhaps there are a few fiefdoms where Juniper could be considered sovereign.  Maybe there is a courtly estate in the pacific northwest where Ocean Spray, Vine maple, and Pacific Yew all vie for supremacy.  Surely the mid-west is a part of the greater Reginum Osagium, but even there you'll find pockets where sundry pretenders to the thrown such as Black Locust, Hickory, and Eastern Red Cedar hold some sway.  As you progress to the east you'll find continued loyalty to the Great Yellow King, but many divide their fealty and admit that Elm or Crepe Mertle is at least a high prince if not a rightful pretender to the high thrown.  And scattered throughout all these regions are countless others, both native born and invaders, that have established themselves as worthy of royal appreciation.  The friends of which have noticed that I've failed to mention and thus no doubt I’ve alienated myself from them forEVER!

...and that's just a brief review of one continent!  SHEESH!

OneBow

[Badly Bent]

Ok gonna allow myself to comment on this debate again. A couple thoughts of mine, keep in mind this is coming from someone who just makes bows and doesn't put a lot of thought into into the science of it. I've never worked
yew but have no doubt that I would love it, shot only one of em', made by Pearlie and it was sweet. If I had the bow building skill level of him or Bryce or Gordon and had a bunch of yew it might be my favorite wood, don't know.
I've used about 15 different woods cut from here in the midwest and will spend hours trying to get a bow out of any
old stave I can get my hands on just for the challenge and joy of bow making. As it turns out though my best shooters
and most durable and dependable hunting bows have come from osage, with black locust coming in a close second.
I spend quite a bit of time hunting and can be rough on bows and expose them to all kinds of extremes, cold, hot, wet, dry and abuses like accidently banging rocks and such while climbing, osage can take this abuse. That being said I kinda think black locust may knock osage off the top for me once I get a little better at working it into a bow. Just have a feeling that I'll get one made one day from locust that will out perform my best osage pound for pound
and locust seems to take abuses well like osage. The only question being will it still maintain that performance year after year like my osage bows seem to. So for me anyway, and from my experiences with the woods I've worked, and with my focus on hunting bows, ........ it's OSAGE.

[Badger]

  Badly, your feelings mirror mine. I have a love hate relationship with black locust, I have gotten a few screamers out of it, I have ruined my share because of chrysals and I have had all my good ones just let go one day, really not that many arrow through them maybe a 200 or so usually. But I love the way the bows feel and shoot if I do my part. Yew is my favorite to work with even though my designs seem to behave just a tad better with the osage. I need a little more practice with the yew I think.

[Badger]

  I was just looking at my bow rack and I do have one hanging on it. 62" long, 1" reflex. I love this bow but lack confidence in the black locust and tend to short draw it. Everytime I shoot it I put it on the scale first and pull it a full 28" several times, even hold it a few seconds. My draw is 26 1/2. Yet when I go to shoot it my past experience with locust that I treated the same way tells me it could blow any time. I just lack the confidence in it.

[echatham]

  I was just looking at my bow rack and I do have one hanging on it. 62" long, 1" reflex. I love this bow but lack confidence in the black locust and tend to short draw it. Everytime I shoot it I put it on the scale first and pull it a full 28" several times, even hold it a few seconds. My draw is 26 1/2. Yet when I go to shoot it my past experience with locust that I treated the same way tells me it could blow any time. I just lack the confidence in it.

im sittin here roughing out some BL billets and you gotta go and say a thing like that  
anyways im buying VOL 3 and 4 now just so i can figure out this mass principal thing. 

[Badger]

  I have a simple ex cel program you can download and just type in a few numbers for your mass estimate. Length, bow weight, how much set back in the limbs, length of stiff handle and fades and wether or not it is backed.

[Slackbunny]

  I have a simple ex cel program you can download and just type in a few numbers for your mass estimate. Length, bow weight, how much set back in the limbs, length of stiff handle and fades and wether or not it is backed.

I would love to see that. I love a good excel spreadsheet. Oops, my nerd is showing 

[echatham]

Yeah i would like to see it too