Beech

[huntertrapper]

How is beech for a bow wood?

[DanaM]

Medium

[snedeker]

I have seen scores of info requests like this over the past 5 plus years of board watching and have never seen a beech bow posted.  I'd like to see a trial.

Dave

[Easternarcher]

How is beech for a bow wood?

Most likely too gnarly and knobby for bow wood.

[DanaM]

I have a beech stave drying eventually I will try it. it only twists about 120 degrees

I see beech that looks so nice and straight but when ya split it, it always seems to corkscrew around the trunk.
Good firewood though

[jamie]

st louis has used it and said it was very good. ive had no experience with it though

[huntertrapper]

My dad was up north and he said he'd try and cut me a stave when after its done seasoning i guess ill try it.

[snedeker]

The lumber is pretty available.  I suppose a slat backed with maple would work well

[Ryano]

Most likely too gnarly and knobby for bow wood.

Actualy nothing could be farther from the truth here. Beech is about one of the straightest easiest to get tree's you could find around here. I cut a few staves of it when I was first starting building bows and didnt know what I was doing, but I think They all got ruined from being out in the weather to long if I remember right. So I've never really tried it as a bow wood, I would suspect it wouldnt be much diferant then oak or ash.....

[FlintWalker]

We saw  beech once in a while at work. It's a lot like sycamore. I don't think it's very tough. 

[Marc St Louis]

I've made about 4 bows out of Beech and all survived. I would rate the wood alongside White Ash. This is the only Beech bow I have pictures of, I don't own the bow anymore but so far as I know it still lives. It's a Powhatan replica

[richpierce]

Beech is very tough and strong and was commonly used for making wooden bodies for planes (planing wood).  it is hard to season w/o checking.

[Bent Rig]

A friend that I'm learning to make bows from just made a bow from Beech and was very pleased . I'm in the process also of working on a stave of beech which is in bow form at the present , and all the straves I have -none check at all -and the stave I'm working on-after bring it down to bow form , I put it in a form to add some reflex and when dried in this form for over 5 mnoths there also was no checking whatsoever - but I did seal the ends down about 8" with latex paint . I'll post pic's when complete.

[wvfknapper]

The beech we have here is very straight and clean, most of the big trees are hollow... From what I have seen locally, when the loggers cut on private land like coal companies,  the coal companies put it in the contract that the loggers have to cut the hollow beech due to insect infestation, and the loggers most times just leave the wood to rot if it's too big for chip wood,,  if a person could get in one of these places and talk to the loggers he could get a gob of free beech staves 

wvflintknapper

[huntertrapper]

thanks WV, i think i might try that. up north a ways there's a lot of logging maybe i could ask. but, i cant split a huge tree(no chain saw or big table saw."