Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: Badger on June 04, 2025, 01:43:49 pm
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When all things are considered, I still consider Osage #1, but there are several species of trees I would take over Osage when I can find a rare, good stave.
#1 Ocean spray. I believe this is about the fastest wood I have ever worked. But hard to dry without splitting, hard to find a decent size stave.
#2 Purple plum, this is my all-time favorite for its flexibility, stiffness and workability.
#3 Chinese elm, like hickory it tends to be somewhat hygroscopic but if kept around 6% it is super fast and virtually unbreakable even with massive violations. No need to chase a ring or even worry about cutting across the grain. The city cuts them down all the time but the trunks weigh over 1,000# and it is virtually impossible to split so must be sawed.
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I can’t speak to this from experience but yew seems to be such an interesting wood in its properties. Should be included. I also find hop hornbeam unique in how stiff it is compared to other woods.
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osage (and yew) will both bend further than most other woods without taking too much set, allowing narrower and/or thicker limbs for a particular design.
all woods take set when worked to the max or overworked, but I wonder if the woods that Badger is investigating or searching for have a quality that does not really have a name. The ability to work repeatedly without loss of strength just below that point where set finally happens.
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osage (and yew) will both bend further than most other woods without taking too much set, allowing narrower and/or thicker limbs for a particular design.
all woods take set when worked to the max or overworked, but I wonder if the woods that Badger is investigating or searching for have a quality that does not really have a name. The ability to work repeatedly without loss of strength just below that point where set finally happens.
I forgot to mention yew, purple plum has the same feel as yew to me when drawing and tillering. I wish I knew how to perform an engineering-grade bend test. I suspect that purple plum can surpass yew, ( currently #1) I haven't had the pleasure of working much purple plum but I do remember that blown-away feeling I had while working with it. Most of the elms are excellent and I feel slightly better than hickory, but Chinese elm has a quality that would allow it to cut into boards for self-bows without worrying about grain run out, it is also fast growing tree that often grows straight as a pole for 10 or 12 feet. Nice creamy white wood, strong and I suspect low hysteresis for a white wood.
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Y’all know me . Osage is king. But mt juniper does well at the salt flats. Also ipa and boo.
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I wish I knew how to perform an engineering-grade bend test.
Are you wishing to test specifically for hysterisis?
I think a hundred years ago there was an impact test that measured rebound heighths.
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Most of the elms are excellent and I feel slightly better than hickory, but Chinese elm has a quality that would allow it to cut into boards for self-bows without worrying about grain run out, it is also fast growing tree that often grows straight as a pole for 10 or 12 feet. Nice creamy white wood, strong and I suspect low hysteresis for a white wood.
Is this the Chinese Elm you are speaking of?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulmus_parvifolia
Sounds like I might even have a chance of finding some here, which would be a novelty.
Mark
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Interesting post badger! Bamboo if done right and heat treated correctly. Sweetgum too! Already mentioned I think but hhb too.
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I hope to be able to get my hands on a stave of this Osage I hear so much of, one day.
I’m am grateful for the bounty of wych elm I have access to. I don’t have much to compare it to but I hear good things about it from people that know more than I do.
I’m still finding myself surprised and impressed by how much wood, of any type, will tolerate if treated nicely.
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Where I live and out of the bows I have made. Sinew backed juniper bows are by far the best. Osage just hasn't been quite as fast and its so heavy. Juniper is so lightweight, It just feels like nothing in the hand and zipps arrows downrange. Not that osage is bad or anything like that! It is just that a well made sinew backed juniper just hard to beat in my book
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When all things are considered, I still consider Osage #1, but there are several species of trees I would take over Osage when I can find a rare, good stave.
#1 Ocean spray. I believe this is about the fastest wood I have ever worked. But hard to dry without splitting, hard to find a decent size stave.
#2 Purple plum, this is my all-time favorite for its flexibility, stiffness and workability.
#3 Chinese elm, like hickory it tends to be somewhat hygroscopic but if kept around 6% it is super fast and virtually unbreakable even with massive violations. No need to chase a ring or even worry about cutting across the grain. The city cuts them down all the time but the trunks weigh over 1,000# and it is virtually impossible to split so must be sawed.
Just to nail down the parameters, exactly what features are you considering when you are ranking woods? Durability, speed, resistance to set, ????
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Day in day out Osage will be very hard to beat but their are lots of other wood out there that make fine bows, HHB probably for me is right up there if you can find a nice piece. I have a sinew backed Juniper bow I got in the bow trade here years ago, it is a sweet shooter and very smooth and fast just not sure how it would do unbacked so if we are looking for wood that will usually work well un back then like I said Osage is hard to beat. :) :)
Pappy
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Great thread Steve. :OK I was at a shoot this past weekend where we were working on bows. I watched Terry Hughes make a sapling HHB bow using just a big knife and a pencil. He had it strung and shooting in a couple of hours. The bow sprung right back to it's original profile immediately after unstringing it. I was very impressed at his ability as well as quality of the HHB.
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What's "best" is what's commonly available in your location.
Hickory,hedge, hornbeam, yew, juniper,elm and others have made bows for many.
Use what you got and make the best bow you can.
Hey Bob, you coming to Mojam this year? I'll bring the cord protector... ;D
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Paul...I will save you a spot. I had planned to wait until the next anniversary, but I actually(http://) found a small travel trailer and I plan to be there. It is always hard to miss our family reunion. :)
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Paul...I will save you a spot. I had planned to wait until the next anniversary, but I actually(http://) found a small travel trailer and I plan to be there. It is always hard to miss our family reunion. :)
I hear ya :OK.
I'll be bringing the Scamp so we'll have the tiny trailer trailer park at the top of the hill. ;)
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One of the fastest bows I ever made was from fire-hardened Chinese elm sapling. I’ve got four fresh staves of it that are as straight as boards and really looking forward to them being dry!
I’m a huge fan of Hackberry. Similar in properties to elm. Light in physical mass, has no commercial value and takes over farms around here so it’s easy to get permission to cut as much as you want, and usually grows pipe-straight. With a good heat treatment it’s not difficult to get 165 fps out of good hackberry. With careful design and an aggressive treatment it’ll do 175 fps no sweat.
It’ll handle just about any design you throw at it. From Holmegaards to Ishi paddle bows to heavily-radiused longbows. Of course some designs are more “optimal” than others, but I’ve made a couple hundred bows with rounded at lenticular cross sections with it by now and they don’t disappoint.
If I was forced to choose only one wood to use for the rest of my life, it might just be hackberry.
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Elm is the best white wood for me for making bows. American elm is what I have at hand, so it is what I use. If Chinese elm is superior it would have to be one hell of a bow wood.
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For us that live in abundant osage country it is hard to try something else when you have a few hundred seasoned osage staves
ready to go.
I have only made a few hickory bows, one red cedar, and reworked a handful of other people's hickory backed red oak board bows. I have 4 acres of woods with various species of hickory, hackberry, elm, black cherry, red and white oak and hop hornbeam but have never cut the first stave from any of these wood types on my land to try to make a bow out of. I have cut a lot of hickory off a friend's place to split into staves for my bow students.
I don't have any osage on my land but could easily get permission to cut it off local land that was about to be cleared for development.
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Elm is the best white wood for me for making bows. American elm is what I have at hand, so it is what I use. If Chinese elm is superior it would have to be one hell of a bow wood.
Hackberry is one of my favorites also. It is the most steam bendable of all American woods and surely one of the most bendable woods n the world. You can make some very radical designs with relative ease using hackberry. If I ever got another shot at it I would take more time keeping the moisture down. It is kind of hydroscopic.
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Eric you’re missing out on some fun bowmaking! Many of the “lesser” woods are a joy to work with. Abundant. Straight. Durable.
Yeah it’s hydroscopic in my experience too. It’s not prone to checks so I let hackberry bows sit in the dry box at 90-100 degrees overnight between roughing out and tillering sessions. A solid heat treatment really helps to keep it straight and lively in the long term.
Steve if you’d like to try hackberry again and don’t have access to it, I’d be happy to send you a stave. Reach out to me at the email on my site. It’s listed on the “contact” page.
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My focus was different than most part time bowyers, I made bows to sell, donate to charity auctions and give away to others which turned into an almost full-time job for a while, perhaps for 20 years or so. My focus was developing a bow design that was stable, consistent and durable that people wanted and they all wanted osage. If you have a backlog of orders you don't want to waste time playing around with other woods. At one time I was turning down about 12 bow order requests a month just to keep things manageable, keep bow making fun and not turn it into drudgery like I did when I was a duck decoy carver and had a 3 year backlog of orders.
Early on I did a little experimenting, I tried a sassafras bow that blew up, I tried to make a bow out of white oak pallet wood but used gorilla glue and found that gorilla glue had no place in bow making when the glue failed.
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I have tried every bow wood from birch to black locust that grows in my area over the years. I don't build nearly as many as I used to, but from here on out it will be either elm, or Osage when my good friend Will B gives me an Osage stave. He builds longer bows, so he gifts me with well seasoned shorter Osage staves from 50 to 60 inches long. With my short 25 inch draw they work fine for me. For a good solid hunting bow I have nothing against black locust either. Fire hardened hickory, and white oak works out pretty well also.JME :BB
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When I was cutting down my hickory in SC, my buddy kept pointing out elm trees asking if they were hickory. I'm not sure of what types of elm they were, but he has a blue million of them scattered throughout his massive acreage. He also offered to cut down a persimmon that was absolutely towering...probably 10" diameter, and it snaked fairly straight up for what looked to be 30' as it raced to keep its leaves in some sunshine.
Does the type of elm matter, and if so, what is the optimum elm tree y'all like for self bows?
Should I get my bud to drop that persimmon for me next spring when I'm home chasing turkeys? He made a good point regarding compression/toughness....Persimmon was the wood of choice for golf driver construction back in the day, so seems like should be a good bow wood. I know people like persimmon, but is is worth the time and effort when time is limited and I have Osage and Hickory, and will have some elm?
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I did one persimmon in my life, and hopefully the last. I think the wood on my tree was full of silica or something. I dulled every tool I have within a few strokes. I kept sharpening and sharpening, sticking with it until the end. It was not worth the work; I don't know if all persimmons are like this, hopefully not.
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K. I'll stick with the hickory for now, nab a few elm logs in the spring, and put persimmon out of my mind till someone on here posts one up that gets the juices flowing.
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I was just reading up on persimmon and it was listed as being useful for golf clubs and bows. I was checking to see if silica in the wood is a common problem with persimmon and it said it was not common but did occur more frequently than in other American woods. And quite commonly in tropical woods, which persimmon has a lot in common with.
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The different woods I mentioned above are not superior to Osage, but some come close.
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Around here we have Siberian elm. It is a favorite of mine. Beautiful color and smells great. Some people around here call it Chinese elm, but it’s not. I think I asked Steve about this and he is correct about the Chinese elm identification. Chinese elm has more pale, sycamore like bar, Siberian bark is darker and more fissured in mature trees. Hickory works great in my dry climate. My favorites are still sinew/juniper though with sinew/incense cedar following. I will say the best/fastest self bow I have ever made was hickory. I’ve been trying with osage, but haven’t matched it yet.
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Osage maybe the best wood to make a bow - in terms of broad availability, workability and tolerance - however not sure if it also makes the best bow. Imho a yewbow always shoots more comfy and will not be slow either at the same time. And I will always prefer a nice laburnum over osage as well. Then we have Rhamnus cathartica, European buckthorn which I consider at least equal to osage. In terms of compression tolerance I'm impressed with snakewood and bloodwood.