Thin ringed Osage again

[Drewster]

Conversely to the thin ring issue, I built an osage bow with really thick rings.  It is the worse, weakest piece of osage I ever worked with.  That sold me on the fact that ring thickness doesn't tell the story of the quality of a piece of wood for a bow.

[BowEd]

The TBB series was my mentor in the beginning.Helped me too,but like said earlier there are different experiences with different woods and designs that can be opinionated.Not written in stone so to speak is what I mean.

[Pappy]

I love thin ringed Osage, if I can chase it, it's thick enough. Like most wood if it is thin it had a tough growing life which I think makes wood more dense and tougher, like the TBB series JMO. 
 Pappy

[Jim Davis]

Jim Hamm,  Tim Baker, Jay Massey, Paul Comstock, and Steve Allely put more information about making wooden bows into The Traditional Bowyer's Bible than had ever been assembled in one book before. They had only each other's experience and the older books to go on.

As mentioned in the book, they benefited from earlier writers, but they did not have the advantage of contact with the thousands of us who make wooden bows and share our experiences on forums. They did most of their  communication by phone (probably land lines at that).

Yes, there are mistaken ideas in those books. But anybody who follows their advice will end up with a bow--or hundreds of them--and arrows too.

We have a great resource in the P.A. forum. The one thing that would be as big a help would be if there were an indexing mechanism that would put all our observations on one subject in one spot, preferably overseen and edited by a panel of recognized masters.  THEN, there would be a real authority to consult!

Jim Davis