Hawthorn Bow

[meanewood]

I'm nearly ready to start on a hawthorn bow. I've read Hawthorn is good in both tension and compression, so I'm wondering what profile would suit best?

It was a 70mm diameter log, so the back already has a nice rounded shape, so I'm thinking an elliptical profile with the belly rounded about the same!

This looks like a 'hard' wood, even the cadmium on the back was hard to sand in order to clean it up!

Does anyone have any advise?

[Lucasade]

No advice but I'll be watching this - we've got some lovely hawthorn at the bottom of our garden that I've got my eye on.

[joachimM]

Hawthorn is very good in compression, especially with dry wood (8-9% mc) so when you start noticing set, watch out for the back. Still, I'd keep the belly flat.
A farrier's rasp does wonders on hawthorn.
Pins are often hidden under the surface and can give you explosive breaks. Apart from that its great bow wood.

[mikekeswick]

Hawthorn has taken more set than I would like in the couple of bows I've made from it. It will fail in tension before it will in compression. I think its elasticity isn't the best and maybe its a bit 'sluggish'...It's a bit of a 'funny' wood imo.

[joachimM]

Mikekeswick: isn't that a contradiction? If it fails in compression, it means it's taking (a lot of) set, but you write it fails in tension before compression?

I guess it's rather like black cherry (compression strong), although my experience with that wood is very limited.

[meanewood]

Thanks for for those observations.

I have noticed that Jaro Petrina has some good info on 'white woods' on the EWBS site.
He states Hawthorn to have a 9 out of 10 rating in tension and a 8 out of 10 rating in compression!

 

[mikekeswick]

I've made a flatbow of about 60# and a d-bow of about 40#. The flatbow was the last stave bow I broke! It got to about 26 inches then lifted a splinter. The d-bow is still alive but took more set than I expected to see. Not a lot of experience but I've seen a few others that my friends have made with similar results.
The hawthorn round here is a pain to find good enough pieces so I more or less gave up on it. I'm sure with a good stave and the right person it would make a fine bow

[loefflerchuck]

I have tried only English hawthorn and was not too impressed. It was a smaller branch with a rounded back 55" long D bow and failed in tension at 26". Exploded! It seemed a lot like our local big tooth maple.  I would try it again as a longer bow with a flat belly and back.