How to handle thin ringed osage ( for the newer guys )

[sleek]

Amin, if there is a better place for this, feel free to move it or let me know. This is something I felt like writing because I feel like it could help some folks out with less than ideal staves still produce a very nice bow.

So I would like to post here about a few lessons I have learned. This is not going to always be true but I suspect more often than not. Feel free to add or correct if you wish.

Thin ringed osage, when chased to a single growth ring has several problems. One being the obvious, the rings are thin and hard to chase. The other lesser obvious is the tool marks. Once your ring is established, you need to clean up your tooling marks, you know, the little nicks, chatter ( AKA wash boarding ) and lines left behind from your scrapper. The marks if left alone are stress risers. They are all potential breaking points from where the ring is partially violated and invites a splinter to pop.
Assuming you pop a splinter in your thin ringed osage you can always super glue it down and put a wrap of thread around it to fix that splinter. But chances are high ( read, its gonna happen ) that another splinter will pop somewhere else. The first splinter popping is telling you something so listen and you may save your bow. Its telling you the back ring is so thin, it cannot do its job of holding in the tension stresses. It needs help.

There are two ways to do this. One is back the bow with rawhide, sinew, silk, linen, or some other popular backing. These provide durable backings that hold down the splinters and relieve the back of some of its stresses. You may not want to back your bow however. The way for you to go then would be to decrown your bow. It really may not take much. Just a few consistent flat strokes with your scraper to give you a path of about an inch wide, following the waves of your bow should do. You may ( probably ) be able to even remove the splinter completely while doing this. Adjusting the tiller afterwards is an easy task. The bows weight will have dropped a few pounds depending on how much wood was removed. Shortening the bow, recurving the bow slightly ( remember the wood is thin ringed, dont overstress it ) or heat treating it will recover your weight lost.

Of course the best way with this when dealing with thin rings is to back, decrown to begin with. One last option that needs be mentioned is the sapwood. If the sapwood is in good shape and has thicker rings than the heartwood, leave it on there. You can chare a sap ring to give you a better back than your heartwood would, giving you a much better chance of holding a bow instead of your head because a limb just went air born...

[SLIMBOB]

  I think this is all good advice Sleek, but I would offer that even thin ringed Osage can become a successful unbacked bow, and all things being equal (they rarely are when you have to add this modifier), I prefer no backing if possible.  I just finished a thin ringed Osage bow I posted yesterday.  Each ring is around 1/16" in thickness.  The strongest part of each ring is the very latest growth, so care must be taken to leave as much of it as you can on the back.  When chasing the ring that will become the back, scrape the early growth just on top of it VERY carefully.  This is so easy to recommend and so difficult to accomplish in real time.  I'm pretty good with a draw knife as I've had lot's of practice.  But on these rings you might want to consider sand paper to remove the early growth.  I did not and the results are evident.  The back is smooth with no divots, but the areas that are just millimeters below the adjacent high spots are visible as shadows (the wood had become dark, and when sanded the high spots lightened up).  To remove the dark spots I would have had to take off more wood from the back.  I left it blotchy in color to keep as much wood on the thin ring as possible.  End result is a working bow, unbacked and not decrowned.  Only put 50 arrows or so thru it to this point, but I believe it's good to go.  We will see over the next few weeks, but I'm pretty sure it'll hold.  Again, very good observations and advice you offered up, just thought it important to give a slightly different perspective.

Edit...  I burnish the back on most all my bows, but I believe it is especially important on these thin ringed Osage bows.  I use a big gravy spoon and really get some pressure on it to lay the fibers down.  I get it where I have the light at a low angle so I can monitor the progress visually.  I put my finish on immediately after burnishing.   

[sleek]

Thank you very much for your input sir, exactly the kind of stuff I was hopping would be added.

[blackhawk]

I copied n pasted my response from pp over here.

 In my opinion the key to thin ringed osage lays within how well you chased the ring. You have to be much more careful with the draw knife. I've made a bit of bows from tight ringed osage ( all unbacked too). I will get it down carefully to one ring above my chosen ring, then carefully use a duller drawknife on it till I just start to hit the early wood, then move on up the stave just starting to expose the early crunchy growth. So this leaves a mostly early growth patchy back. This insures you never go to far and down into you chosen ring with the drawknife and thin the ring. Then I take my scraper and scrape the rest of the early growth off. I have had a couple not so nice thinringed staves that just wanted to tear n splinter, so I ended up chasing to one ring above my chosen ring, then scrape away that remaining ring with my wrists cursing me once I was done..lol.   Andwhen you use a scraper you should start at one end and keep working your way up the stave pulling towards you, because if you xo it will pretty much remove its own tool marks and leave you more meat on the ring( which you need on thin stuff)and you won't lose some of it sanding it out.

[RandyN]

Here is a trick that I use on thin ringed Osage. When I started removing wood from staves with a draw knife I would use the draw knife with the blade bevel up.  It worked great to hog wood off quickly but I had a hard time controlling the knife on thin rings.  Then my former life as a parmedic kicked in and I thought about a lesson I learned years ago when staring IV's, another story for another time.  I flipped my draw knife over, bevel down, and started taking off thin/ small amounts of wood.  This works great for me.  I don't get as many splinters and then I am able to do the fine touch up work in the valleys with a scraper or pocket knife.  Funny thing, I have never been able to get a dull draw knife to work for me, so everything I do is with a sharpe knife.  Good Luck with the thin ring osage. 

[turtle]

All real good advice. Blackhawcks method is exactly how i work thin rings. Had to figure it out early cus all i had was thin rings.

[osage outlaw]

You can also "overbuild" a thin ringed bow.  Make it a little longer and a little wider than you would a thick ringed stave.  Less stress on more wood.  You still need to chase a clean ring.

[gstoneberg]

I'm sorry, but I have made many osage bows through the years, quite a few with very tight rings. I have never found any difference in the way they finished though they are much more challenging to chase a ring on.  I really do not share your concerns.

George

[paulsemp]

I do like blackhawk and get down to the ring above and early growth but then I finish chasing with 36 grit sandpaper. By the time you chase the ring all you have to do is finish sanding and not removing tool marks. A litlle slower but keeps you from going to the next ring while cleaning it up

[sleek]

George, have you ever had an osage pop a splinter on you? If so, what did you determine the cause was?

[Fred Arnold]

I agree with George> If you violated the top then you were too aggressive with your procedure in the first place. You should have taken more time and left more room!!!

[gstoneberg]

George, have you ever had an osage pop a splinter on you? If so, what did you determine the cause was?

None that I remember.  When I have problems I normally get a split off a knot or one of the dark weather damage cracks.  I did have a couple blow up due to insect damage.  I've never let ring count influence whether I back the bow or not.  That decision is normally made based on whether it's going to someone else and I want it to be bullet proof, if I run into problems around a knot, or if I'm pushing the design envelope.  I have found that if the osage is even a little bit green it is very hard to prevent a thin ring from tearing as you go around knots.

I 100% agree that real tight rings are not best for new bowyers to make an unbacked bow from as it requires advanced skill with the draw knife and scraper.  If they back it they should be fine.  Osage is a fine beginners bow wood.

George

[Pat B]

I love thin ringed osage! Any time I make a bow with thin rings I try my best not to violate the back ring but that is not always possible...at least for me it isn't. I generally back thesec bows with rawhide(other simple backings will work) and have been pretty successful with my attempts. I have had a few blow but that is part of the excitement of wood bow building. 

[crooketarrow]

  I DON'T CONCEDER A 16 TH THAT THIN.
 I made quite a few with a lot thiner and if the backs all one ring you don't need it.
 I use the ring under the sapwood all the time.
 As long as you go slow tillering and down go to far to fast it will be ok.
 I you need to barnish the back or leave a 1/8 inch of sap wood on it or back it.
 I don't do anything speical just biuld the bow.

[SLIMBOB]

  4.5, 4.5, 5.5, 6, 6.5, 8.5, 10, 10.5.......That's the ring count per inch on 6 Osage bows and 2 staves I just looked at.  16 rings per inch is considerably higher than any others I have laying around.  Figure that after you take that 1/16 inch ring and factor out the early growth of say 25-30%, you have a late wood back that is less than 1/20th of an inch thick.  Yes you can FIND thinner for sure, but that's plenty thin in my experience!  Or, things really are bigger here in Texas.