Ok, I cut down a 4" to 5" diameter Juniper here in Wyoming last year...plenty long. It, like any juniper I've ever seen in the wild, had a bunch of small limbs growing from all sides. I cut them all off, and I threw the log in the garage and basically forgot about it. All I think know about Juniper is that it is great in compression and not so great in tension. I've only made a handfull of bows, and they have all been osage flat bows based off of what Clay Hayes does with his designs. So...I have plenty of sinew, and I plan on sinew backing the bow I make from this Juniper. That said, how should I proceed?
My thoughts are to debark and attempt to chase a growth ring the best I can, though I fear that the knots where the branches were will make that next to impossible. The back will have to be sapwood, as about half the diameter of the tree is sapwood...can you even chase a sapwood ring? Regardless, I figure the strongest design would consist of as much of an unviolated ring as possible. This will result in a fairly highly crowned back. So...I'm thinking leave it crowned and as wide as possible. If I do that...should I then attempt a hollow limb design to minimize set? I'm confused about this...I think I understand that the hollow limb design will allow the entire belly to resist compression forces equally on a crowned stave, and if I made a flat belly design with the crowned back, that would concentrate the compression forces (to the edges?) and make it more likely that the areas receiving those forces would suffer cell damage and thus take set. Please correct me or fill in where I am wrong. So, what type of belly should I go for? Hollow or flat?
I know that I could decrown it and make a ELB design, but I'd really like to try to make a shorter, flatter, recurve out of this piece of wood...that may be asking too much of it, but I'd like to try. What say ye all?
