Old Bows Found

[Dean Marlow]

I was talking to a fellow yesterday that wanted to show me some old bows that came from a old school house. I don't if the fellow who owns the school house found them there or he bought them somewhere else. There were five of them and 2 are recurves. They have some kind of backing on them I am not familiar with. The wood type has got me puzzled also. One of the longbows looks like Yew but seems very heavy for Yew when I pick it up. Going to ask if I could clean up one or two of these to see if I can figure out what kind of wood  they are. The recurves are laminated . I see no writing on them. Thought maybe you guys would like to see them. Dean

[Dean Marlow]

More pics

[PatM]

Nice find. It almost looks like a woven glass backing in one picture.
 The yew look alike might be something like lancewood.
 It will be interesting to see if there is any writing hidden under the grime. They sure knew how to make a graceful looking bow back then.

[mullet]

Most of the bows from that time period, not all of them, were made from Lemon wood, Degami, and backed with a cellulose, glue backing. I have some old, from the 20's, lemon wood bows I would have swore were yew or osage, they were so dark with patina. After I scraped and sanded on a couple to see what the wood looked like I was amazed to see they were a very light tan wood. I also have some recurves that look identical to the two in the picture and under all of the grime they are hickory. Look very closely on the limbs most of them were stamped with a metal stamp with the weight.

[PatM]

The obviously different woods used in the handle section of that one bow lead me to believe that they are not solid hickory(hickory backed for sure).
 Fortisan backing was unidirectional and that backing looks woven.
 The recurves are fairly shallow and while lemonwood was known to be bent with a chemical treatment the curves still look a little bit sharp for what lemonwood can supposedly take.