Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: Marc St Louis on October 26, 2016, 10:16:38 am
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Elm is extremely variable in its bending characteristics, so many variations that I don't think I could list them all. Here is a list of some I have found, some bad, some good and some excellent and I am sure I haven't seen them all
Some trees will have high bend resistance yet will chrysal fairly easily, these usually have a fair bit of reddish brown heartwood and they mostly have thin rings. This wood is only good for backing strips on a low stress design IMO, or firewood
Some trees will have low bend resistance, they're almost like a rubber band. This wood doesn't chrysal easily but quite often they will take more set than I like even with a heavy heat-treating. This wood has very thick rings and a lot of sapwood. Sometimes though you can find one of these types that is excellent once heat-treated. They maintain their profile almost all the way though tillering and lose very little even after shooting. This one is excellent wood but not the best I have seen
Some trees have fairly high bend resistance and don't chrysal easily but they will take set even with a heavy heat-treating. These usually have quite a bit of sapwood with uniform medium thick rings. This is decent wood
Some tree will have good bend resistance, don't chrysal easily and maintain a lot of induced reflex from heat-treating even after shooting. These have variable ring thickness, meaning the rings change in thickness along the length of the tree, and a fair bit of sapwood. This is good wood.
Then we come to the A+ trees. These will always have medium thick uniform rings with a lot of sapwood. The sapwood can have a yellowish tint or be an off white colour. This wood always has a high bend strength, does not chrysal easily and keeps much of any heat-treated reflex that is put in even after shooting.
Very rare but sometimes you get a tree that is actually a bit weak in tension, unusual for Elm. I don't know much about these but they are generally thin ringed, could be that factor that makes them weak.
The differences in all of these is species related but not always. The ones that chrysal easily always seem to be Red Elm but there again there are exceptions. Some of these exceptions could be related to growing conditions, I don't know. The trees with thick rings invariably fall into the White Elm category. Then there's the others. Essentially there are just too many variables. The only way that I have been able to tell is to cut the tree and make a high stress design with the wood. I do tend to avoid Red Elm. The density of the wood does play a part in how good it is most of the time but not always.
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Very interesting read mark! Cheers- Brendan
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Mark - thanx for the benefit of your experience here. As it happens, it is most timely for me! I just had a farmer friend call me last night to offer me some Elm logs from trees he just took down. He was not sure what type of elm the tree was. We are in SW Missouri. I'm looking for a reference for trying to ID the species. Any advice of a good link for such data? He has retained some of the leaves and obviously the bark for me to evaluate.
...also, I was inclined to store the wood round, paint the ends, spray it down with pesticide, and leave the bark on. Is that the correct method for Elm in your experience? I already know to anticipate it being a BOOGER to split.
OneBow
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I have cut quite a bit of Elm over the years looking for bow wood. I have found some quite good and some only good for firewood. I also wish I had a better grasp of indentifying the different types. I find most of it in my area is the type with very small leaves and some reddish heartwood. It is superior wood sometimes but most of the time only marginal bow wood. It responds very well to heat treatment and keeps reflex well. I really like this wood. I wish I could determine what makes some really good and some leaving me wishing I hadn't wasted my time.
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I've had pretty good luck with siberian elm. So far at least, maybe in a few weeks I'll come back here crying. ELB design, ~68", ~60#, heat treated, staying true so far. Medium-thin rings, yellowish sapwood, more heart than sap.
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Damn, Marc. Why didn't you tell me this before? :)
Holding out on me......
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Apart from Red Elm all of those types are almost surely just individual variations of American Elm.
This following statement gives an idea of what makes the tree unique and a factor that may indicate another species or just individual variation within the species. Perhaps the "smaller cells" explains some of the wood variation.
"For over 80 years, U. americana has been identified as a tetraploid, i.e. having double the usual number of chromosomes, making it unique within the genus. However, a study published in 2011 by the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA revealed that about 20% of wild American elms are diploid, and may even constitute another species. Moreover, several triploid trees known only in cultivation, such as 'Jefferson', are possessed of a high degree of resistance to Dutch elm disease, suggesting the diploid parent trees, which have markedly smaller cells than the tetraploid, may too be highly resistant to the disease"
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These common names have regional variations. Never have even read of a "white elm." The American Elm is nearly nonexistent, being the prime victim of Dutch elm disease in the last century.
onebowonder, your elm logs are probably what goes by "winged elm" or " witch elm." Makes good bows generally.
Other names other elms in the eastern U.S. include slippery elm, cork elm, and red elm.
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Slippery and Red are the same tree. Cork Elm is Rock Elm where we are. I have to look for a long time before finding any Red Elm or Rock Elm around here but I have seen isolated pockets of them.
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Just today I put some oil on an elm (ulmus glabra) ELB, 50#/28". It's probably the fastest selfbow I ever made. The stave was unusually lightweight, as if was holding a stave of willow or something. From the 2" of reflex, 1" remains after tillering and shooting, no heat treatment. The mass ended up half an ounce lighter than mass principle recommends.
Marc, thank you for sharing. It's so difficult to try and figure out what makes one tree better bow wood compared to another, no matter the species I think. I've cut junipers that grow in "ideal locations" that ended up fluffy lightweight with massive rings, for example. A couple of questions though: do you take note of growing conditions? – nutrients, water, wind, etc? Any thoughts there? And have you noticed any difference in mass/thickness in the various qualities of elm you list? I'm guessing that's what you refer to as "bend resistance" (more bend resistance makes a thinner/lighter-in-mass bow)?
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These common names have regional variations. Never have even read of a "white elm." The American Elm is nearly nonexistent, being the prime victim of Dutch elm disease in the last century.
onebowonder, your elm logs are probably what goes by "winged elm" or " witch elm." Makes good bows generally.
Other names other elms in the eastern U.S. include slippery elm, cork elm, and red elm.
Jim are you sure winged elm and witch elm are the same? I thought Wych elm was a european species.
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Thanks for this info, Marc. I don't have access to elm staves, but I've tried to make hickory backed bows from red elm boards. Two of them chrysalled and one took a lot of set and performed subpar. I'm willing to put some of the blame on my tillering, but I've made good bows from hard maple, hickory, and ERC boards from the same lumberyard. So, I've given up on red elm. They do carry a few grey elm boards, whatever species that is, and I'm tempted to try it someday. Anyone have any experience with this grey elm?
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Grey elm is American Elm and even Red elm is called Grey Elm. Hope that makes it clear. ;)
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Bacteria work on Elm quickly so leaving the log whole is not recommended especially if it is sealed.
As I said, I have found that Elm with little sapwood and a lot of heartwood to not be worthwhile making a bow out of. It's very rare to find one of those to be good wood. Still if it's all you can get your hands on then by all means use it, just don't stress the wood too much. This is the Red Elm species also called Slippery Elm.
It's hard to say if the different variations are all American Elm, also commonly called White Elm. There might be some crossing over with the new species brought over from other countries. I have read at some point that young trees are less likely to get Dutch Elm, why you see so many young tree and hardly any old trees.
Winged Elm and Wych Elm are 2 different species, the first is NA and the second from Europe. Winged Elm does not seem to grow North of the border here.
Cork Elm does seem to be a variation of the Red or Slippery Elm. There are some papers that say it is a Hard Elm, I have seen some research that separates the many species into Hard and Soft Elm.
Growing conditions are another factor that are hard to figure in. I have cut Elm growing in very rich soil with rings 3/8" or more. The wood was good but not excellent. The best I have come across was wood with uniform growth rings 1/8" to 3/16" thick. Some trees have fairly low density yet have a high bend resistance. These usually chrysal easily and you can literally feel them give way as you tiller them past their point of failure.
This site http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/research/centers/woodanatomy/index.php probably has the most information on the net. I bought a CD years ago called Woods of the World. It is comprehensive with more information on different species world wide than any other source I have come across
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Thanks for clearing that up, Pat. Someday, when I've steeled myself for another disappointment, I'll give that grey elm a try. :)
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Marc, Do you get Rock Elm where you are or is it too far north? It has corky branches and really stands out. Elm with just corky bark seems like it's just American Elm that has that attribute enhanced.
American Elm apparently only hybridizes in a lab scenario. Red Elm will cross with Siberian elm in the wild though.
Some of it has to do with when the species set their seeds. American Elm is not in sync with the others naturally.
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Rock Elm is supposed to grow up here Pat but I can't really say I've seen any. I have cut some Elm that is as dense as Rock Elm but it didn't have the characteristics of the tree.
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Glad to hear your experiences with Elm variations. I spent a lot of time with Elm and many of them made horrible bows. Never broke an Elm bow but some of the wood is so weak and feels spongy when drawing them, like wet wood even after drying out for a year in the house. The good Elm I have found I believed to be Winged Elm, smaller leaves and harder, heavier wood. The best thing about the wood for me is the pretty grain.
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I've been using staves removed from a large diameter Chinese elm tree (Ulmus parvifolia) I received several years ago after it blew down during a typhoon here in Taiwan. I was really impressed by the wood's beauty and bendability, but the stuff sets worse than anything I've ever used to date. I tried steam bending recurves into one of the staves and some strange gelatinous substance emerged during steaming...not anything like the oily pigment that emerges from wood during steaming, this was like a jello that stuck to the wood. I get the feeling the woods chemical properties allow it to retain moisture in humid climates similar to what hickory will do and hence take a lot of set. I am going to try doing a good heat treating session for my last few staves. Hopefully that helps. I was very disappointed in it and was looking forward to getting a pretty bow out of it.
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Without reading here much, I will say this. Red elm = crap. Leave it. Any other, is decent. I have made a few of a species I cant Id, and its pure gold. Osage cant do what this stuff can. Of course, this stuff cant split like osage either, so there is that...
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Wych elm is a European species Ulmus glabra. The different types can all pollinate each other too so identifying them is tricky to say the least. Our two main types are wych elm and small leaved elm.
funnily enough there is little variation between the wood here. It is pretty much all excellent. I have only ever had one low density tree and it bent like a noodle, took loads of set and ended up getting burnt!
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I've harvested both rock elm and american elm here on the south side of lake erie. I'm pretty sure we have slippery and winged elm as well, but haven't come across them yet. American elm is actually quite common here, but only up to 12" in diameter. I can count on one hand the number of trees I've found larger than that. Dutch elm disease tends to take them out when they reach full maturity. There's three trees in an area I am allowed to cut in that are approaching a foot in diameter. They are under the canopy, 30 feet tall, straight and branch free most of the way up. There may be as many as 30+ staves between them. I'm keeping a close eye on them for signs of beetles. Chances are I will harvest them this spring regardless.
I've only made one bow out of elm so far and it was with the rock variety. It was supposed to be my trade bow for this year, but it came in way under weight. I still have the sister stave. I'll have to dig it out and check the rings. Thanks for the info Mark. I was beginning to wonder why everyone speaks so highly of elm based on the results I had. Chances are I just had undesirable growth ring characteristics. I'll be checking out the remainder of may elm staves and choosing one for another try.
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We have a lot of Elm here and it reaches larger sizes too. I wouldn't waste time cutting larger stuff though. The better wood is in smaller trees.
Really hard to tell how many trees are actually resistant to the blight but many look very promising going by their size and proximity to diseased trees.
We do have a database identifying trees over a certain size that are still healthy. Few people probably realize what a majestic tree it can grow into.
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Another thing I have noticed is that because Elm is so tension strong it does seem to make a better bow if the back has a crown. If the crown is too high though then there is a chance of it pulling a splinter if the bow is too highly stressed
There is a tree not far from me that is approaching 2' in diameter. It's growing in a field by itself and that may be its saving grace. As Pat says though, I don't believe that wood from a large tree is the way to go with Elm. All the better bows I have made were from trees under 8" in diameter.
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Some of the towns in Nova Scotia still have those giant trees lining the streets. I was surprised to see that the growth rings on them only indicated about 40-45 years of growth with rings about half an inch thick. The open growing conditions really favor fast growth.
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The red elm in Iowa will make a bow if long enough and wide enough.Usually from under 10" trees.It is very elastic but just does'nt have the strength seems like.I hav'nt had it chrysal any but I'm pretty sure it will.Better suited for kids or womens' bows.Not the greatest taking way too much set even after heat treating.It'll have a half inch of sapwood and a light brown heartwood.Nice and straight staves easily gotten though.
I once gave a red elm bow 7" of heat treated reflex and through tillering it lost 6" of it.Not good at all.Could of been the design but same design on other woods held up lots better.
Now a winged elm I did[think it was from South Carolina] held up very well.Just as good as osage.It seemed almost like hickory in a lot of ways.It was that dense.
Many elm do stand dead here too and are firewood and are a devil to split,or homes for the woodpeckers.Morel mushrooms are found around them also.
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<snip>...or homes for the woodpeckers.Morel mushrooms are found around them also.
Mmmmmmm..... Morels!!! :D -OneBow
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Not to change the purpose of this thread here but many abandoned farm places here with overgrown groves here contain lots of morels with many red elms growing there.Some enthusiasts make supplemental living from selling the mushroom.
In all fairness to the elm though they have served a different type purpose here in Iowa.Other than being made into bows.Being excellent wind breaks for rural farm yards.That and the silver maple[I call them coon den trees].They grow fast and establish themselves quickly.Reasons being that there are so many dead ones clustered around now.In southern Iowa they seem to live longer and repopulate themselves better than northern Iowa.Could be the disease is established better up there.It is more diverese and populated with different trees overall here in southern Iowa which may be a factor too.
Three elms here as far as I can figure though.American elm/chinese elm/and the red elm.
I'm still wanting another winged elm stave though.Great stuff.
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Since I think there is a lot of overlapping of common names for these trees, I thought the definitive word from the Forest Products Laboratory of the US Forest Service might be useful, so here is the text dealing with the elms:
Ulmus spp.
this page uses English units of measure
click here to view the file in metric units
Family: Ulmaceae
click to print or download the file in .pdf format
Elm
Elm (Ulmus spp.) contains about 45 species native to Asia [11], Europe and the Mediterranean [6], South and Central America [7] and North America [7]. All species look alike microscopically. The word ulmus is the classical Latin name.
Soft Elms
Ulmus americana-American elm, American soft elm, American weeping elm, American white elm, Florida elm, gray elm, gray hard elm, rock elm, springwood, soft elm, swamp elm, water elm, white elm
Ulmus rubra-gray elm, Indian elm, it slips ooo-hoosk-ah, moose elm, red elm, red wooded elm, rock elm, slippery elm, soft elm, sweet elm
Hard Elms
Ulmus alata-cork elm, mountain elm, red elm, southern elm, wahoo, wahoo elm, water elm, whahoo, winged elm, witch elm
Ulmus crassifolia-American red elm, basket elm, cedar elm, red elm, rock elm, small leaved elm, southern rock elm, Texas elm, water elm
Ulmus serotina-Red elm, September elm
Ulmus thomasii-Canadian rock elm, cliff elm, cork elm, corkbark elm, corky elm, corky barked elm, hickory elm, northern cork elm, northern corkbark elm, rock
There is also mechanical data for the elms on the same page, here:
https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/research/centers/woodanatomy/techsheets_display.php?geo_category_id=2&genus_commonname_criteria=c&sorting_rule=1a
As listed above, winged elm is also know here in the states as witch elm. The mechanical dats seems to place this elm first in bending strength.
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Anybody got a solid read on Siberian Elm (U. pumila)? Tbb IV had a lot of good to say about elm in general, but nothing about this specifically.
It's absolutely everywhere in SE Idaho (invasive, aka biggest weed in Idaho), and I just got permission to cut one from the Urban Forester here (about 3" thick and dead-on straight, maybe 25' tall).
I'm getting the impression from the comments on here that it doesn't like to split straight, so can you recommend any particular techniques for getting it to stave thickness?
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I remember reading the Bow Woods chapter of TBB4 when I first started making bows; "All elms are excellent bow woods." If I ever think about making a bow from elm again, I'm going to think "osage, osage, osage" instead. :o
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I like how the names are freely intermingled between hard and soft Elms. lol
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I remember reading the Bow Woods chapter of TBB4 when I first started making bows; "All elms are excellent bow woods." If I ever think about making a bow from elm again, I'm going to think "osage, osage, osage" instead. :o
Lol... If only I lived within 500 miles of the nearest osage...
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I don't know how the different species of elm growing in america are, I only now witch (whych?) elm (ulmus glabra), but I've found elm one of the safest trees to dry/season. Beaten only by hazel, I think. That's a nice thing about it. I've never had an elm stave check or crack while drying. They can warp if you don't take notice of tension wood, but that's true with most trees, I figure. I usually put freshly cut staves indoors right away. Works great. Right now I'm performing some sort of drying experiment actually. I have an elm stave that I cut a week ago. It's been hanging by the ceiling over the fire stove – crackling dry, 23-25°C. I cut it about 2" thick. It lost about 10% weight in 3 days. No cracks, checks, warping, or movements of any kind. At this rate I'll have a completely dry stave in a couple of weeks or so. Not all woods can do that.
I figure this is because elm has a strong fiber-to-fiber strength. The fibers are interlocking to some extent so they don't separate from each other easily. For the same reason elm can be "thready" to split. But for the same reason I found it safe to ignore when a stave is a little bit twisted. A couple of years ago I made a 60# bow from a stave with a 90° twist. I simply ignored the twist and drew the bow out as if the stave had been straight grained. Fibres actually running diagonally through the bow. Worked fine.
Yeah, I like elm.
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Yes pat,growing up in Nova Scotia 3' and even some larger diameter trees where common.the last visit back 3 years ago most of those giants had been removed because of D/E in the town of Antigonish. Elm is my favorite!
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Oddly enough I cut an Elm about 8 ~ 10 years ago very late in the season so I didn't get around to splitting till after the Winter. When I came back to it in the Spring the 2 logs had split in many different places, first time I ever saw that. What I could salvage of the wood turned out to be junk. That tree was good for firewood only.
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Well, I went to pick up the Elm my friend had saved for me, ...and sadly, it's Red Elm! :( The rings are nearly half an inch thick and almost entirely heart wood with just a narrow band of sap wood right below the bark. The leaves were all about 3 -4 inches long and an inch wide or better. I'm not sure if I'll try to get a bow out of this or not.
But not to worry, the heart wood is CRAZY PRETTY and will make VERY NICE drum rings and other projects I'm sure. I will not let it go to waste, but I really do wish it had been Winged Elm. I showed it to buddy that turns wooden bowls and now he wants me to go back to get the big trunk log to make bowl blanks. It's a good thing I don't have a lathe - or I'd have to try my hand at yet another expensive hobby.
OneBow
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Lucky your a diverse primtive creater Onebowonder.When I kept trying to make red elm bows I liked the color of the wood too.Used to call them tastee freeze bows.Like the ice cream.White sapwood and chocolate heartwood after varnishing.
A couple of FG bow making friends I have love red elm for their laminations.Seems to work fine for them.No crushing whatsoever.Good edge grain red elm is still very useful for bows.
I've hand split dozens and dozens of chords of elm over the last 36 years for firewood.It'll get the best out of ya that's for sure.I always look at it different now after starting to make bows the last seven years or so.For the people who are fortunate to have the denser type elm growing around them they should feel fortunate.I personally look forward to making a bow out of good elm just as much as any osage.Well almost.....lol.Reason being the way it takes heat treating so well as previously stated and holds up over the long term.The good stuff seems to have a combination feel from working with it like hickory and dogwood or ironwood but only lighter in weight slightly.
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Well, I cut down a small Siberian elm (about 3.5" not counting bark) this morning. So we'll see how it goes.