The surprise bow (A bit pic heavy)

[dbb]

I recently made my first bow from european black cherry but the design was low stress and i never got the feel for the wood in that one.
So i took a short stave and set out to stress it to death  . I like to look at shorties but i prefer to shoot at my natural drawlength as my precision suffer badly
when i dont.
The stave was  r/d on one side and straight on the other but only a slight twist so nice but too short.
Anyway i quickly whittled out a generic 54" long 2"wide at the fades and 1/2" tips bow..why bother with skinny tips on a bow thats gonna fail i thought.
Well after tillering it i started to push it...but it just refused to fail,i even pulled it to 27" and measured it to 43# at that draw.
Naturally it took some set,but less than i thought and it dont get worse".  So here are some pics of the little bugger.






Its feels good to know i have 5 fine long staves from the same log 

      /Mikael

[turtle]

Sorry to hear that you experiment failed to fail. 

At least ya got a sweet bow out of deal. 

[Josh B]

Cool!  Josh

[Dictionary]

why stiff handle and not bendy handle pyramid design?

[hedgeapple]

That's an awesome bow for the second attempt. Yeah, it took a little set but not bad at all, considering the length and the draw.

Now look at your pictures and learn.  The left limb took most of the set.  Looking at the brace profile you can see that the right limb isn't bending as much.  It's stronger that's why the left limb took more set.

As mentioned, I would have gone with a bendy handle on that short of a bow.  But, man you pulled off a stiff handle bow pretty darn well.  I love the smooth profile lines you have on the handle. Good job.

[Zion]

yep, thats WORKING!

[steve b.]

That's a keeper for sure.  Nice looking too, the bow that is.

[dbb]

That's a keeper for sure.  Nice looking too, the bow that is.

Thank you Steve,thats why i turn away..i dont wanna scare you away before you comment 

why stiff handle and not bendy handle pyramid design?

The point was to make a high stress design Just to see what the wood could take,never thought it would make a bow.
It was only after it held up i steamed in the tips and added horn nocks..as  a reward
 @hedgeapple
Its my second with this wood,i have made a couple of shooters before.But the whole point with this bow was to learn
I might name it "Learning Curve"

The left limb was naturally r/d so the set is about the same i think,in the full draw i use the left as toplimb.

[burn em up chuck]

     whoa; nice attempt at failure. good looking bow

                                                chuck

[rps3]

Good looking bow. What is the difference between european black cherry and U.S. black cherry?

[dwardo]

Thats because our Cherry is a brilliant bow wood. Add a little heat and its even better.

[dbb]

Good looking bow. What is the difference between european black cherry and U.S. black cherry?

Besides being different subspecies i dont know.This is Prunus padus,i dont know the latin of yours.
The european is very lightwight (this bow weigh in at 357grams with string i think that is just over 12 oz or so)
Very good in compression but is said to be less good in tension.
But as we all know,that is individual so i just got a good one i guess.

[Badly Bent]

Nicely done!

[PEARL DRUMS]

Good, even bending will take you a long way to staying together! Good effort on that wood.

[Squirrelslayer]

so you tried to fail but failed at failing you fail at failing at trying to fail i think i must stop confusing myself  anyway nice looking bow tiller is of slightly but still a good bow.