I was walking alongside a train track several years ago and came across this small diameter Elm growing between the tracks and the Ottawa river that had been beheaded, every once in awhile the railroad sends out these trains mounted with huge brush cutters to take care of anything growing too close to the tracks. What was left of the tree was about 6" in diameter, about 6' long, straight with only a couple small branches at the top end. I went back with a saw and cut it down
. Turned out to be fairly good Elm. The wood from this tree was not very dense but it was elastic. At between 3/16" to 1/4" thick the growth rings were fairly thick, pretty sure that was because it was growing near a river and probably getting a lot of nutrients. This is more than likely one of the reasons why it was not very dense wood. I made a few bows out of the tree and had 1 stave left, the side with the branches. The stave was fairly narrow so a narrow bow was all I could make out of it; I couldn't get more than 1 1/4" of width out of the limbs. I used dry heat to take out some dips in the wood which added about 3" of reflex and to take out a sideways jog but didn't do much else in the way of heat-treating. The bow kept about 1" of reflex after tillering
. The limbs have a rubbery feel when bending them which doesn’t do much for performance and I couldn’t quite get 40# @ 28” despite 5/8” thick limbs on a 65” N to N bow, not a big problem since I didn't want a heavy draw weight anyway. Still it flings an arrow reasonably well. The elasticity of the wood is its redeeming factor. A couple pictures of the bow
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