So, I'm getting back into making bows and I have a couple pieces of ipe that I'd like to turn into hickory backed longbows. Also, I just want to have some hickory backing strips for other bow building projects. I have a piece of pretty questionable looking ash, and frankly a couple of the 1x pieces of hickory I have kinda look like they might be questionable too. Picking perfect boards is just one of those skills that I still need a lot of practice with. These boards (with the exception of one), were all ones that I felt were somewhat questionable at the time but figured I could get away with using them to make bows, especially because they were hickory. Anyway, here are the photos.
This is the one piece of lumber that I think will make good backing strips. It's plain-sawn and looks like it was mostly fairly parallel to the surface of the tree it was cut out of. Seems like I remember reading that rift-sawn might be a better choice, but I think if the grain is reasonably flat, even with plain-sawn lumber that it should still make decent backing strips. Correct me if I'm wrong of course.
First questionable board - I actually thought I might be able to get an unbacked bow out of this board, but I think the grain is too wavy with too many runoffs
Second questionable board
Straight grain on one side until that faint line I've drawn, then it begins to run off
Looks pretty straight along the side too
Fairly straight along the other side, but a bit of grain runoff
Some runoffs
Third questionable board
Looks pretty straight on this side though
Anyway, like I said, I'm not the best at picking boards. Is any of this salvageable for backing strips? The main thing is I want to get some backing strips for the two ipe longbows. If I could get backing strips out of one of these boards then maybe I could back the questionable hickory boards and the questionable bit of ash I have as well. I'm planning on hitting up the lumberyard again in a few days so I can probably do a better job of looking for boards then. Will hickory tolerate some minor runoffs when used for backing strips, just as a hickory board will make a selfbow even with some pretty serious runoffs? Thoughts, or suggestions?
