What are good wood choices for this style bow

[Black Moshannon]

I’m looking for some thoughts on preferred wood for bows made from small diameter trees. Trees that you can cut down with a small hatchet and carry out in one hand, then work the stave down from the belly side, taking just the bark off the back. The bow would be narrow, about 1 1/4 wide by about 66” long, 50 to 60 pounds, bending though the handle. It would have a flat belly and crowned back.  It seems like elm is a good choice. I’ve been doing this with hickory but it seems to be difficult. I wonder if better hickory bows are from bigger staves. The best one I turned out was from a larger size tree. I’m looking for something that would have been easy to work with stone tools. Any ideas?

[PatM]

Elm for sure, Osage suckers, HHB...

[Stickhead]

Rose of Sharon, if you can find a nice branch

[bradsmith2010]

yes osage is good for that,,maybe try to sinew back the hickory and see what you think,,

[Santanasaur]

I really like hickory in sapling bows, especially with good humidity management and heat treating. Ryan Gil’s excellent stone age build on youtube was with a young hickory. Today i finished tillering a hickory sapling 72” long  that was about 2” wide pulling  70# at 30.”

[Black Moshannon]

That’s a heavy weight. Those are still pretty wide bows for the size trees I had cut. I couldn’t have gotten more than 1 1/4 wide out of mine. I noticed that the really small trees I cut, for some reason the wood was oddly soft, when dried and even heat treated, but had extreme tension on the string. They both developed some chrysals on the belly, even though the tiller is even. They both had a “core” area running through the center. I think my bow design was too narrow and the weight too high, and the belly was overpowered. I made a narrow bow out of a larger hickory tree and the wood was hard as normal  and didn’t develop any chrysals.

[NonBacked]

You didn't specify a draw length, but at 28", you should be able to get pretty close to 50 lb. from a 1.25" hickory limb/sapling (s.g. = 0.72) that is 66" ntn. Try to find one that's 1.5" so you'll have a little margin.
H

[diliviu]

Many would work. I would go with wild plum and in this case with a belly not perfectly flat.

[dylanholderman]

Osage suckers and honeysuckle branches will probably give you those kind of weights too, provided of corse that you can find straight twist free one’s

[Morgan]

Kenneth, man that goes by thunder on here has posted some elm d bows that are exactly what you are wanting to do

[George Tsoukalas]

I've made sapling bows from osage, maple, oak and maybe some others. Here are some directions.
http://traditionalarchery101.com/saplingbow.html

Jawge

[AndrewS]

Elm is a good choice, and the design like an original Holmegaard....

[GlisGlis]

hazelnut is good wood
easy to find perfectly straight saplings
easy to work.

[diliviu]

I didn't have luck with hazel for something like this. Chrystaled. Seemed too inelastic in compression. It might work for 28 if really long.
Dogwood also works, but wild plum seemed much more elastic in compression (and elastic enough in tension, also).

[Black Moshannon]

My draw length is 27”. Thanks for all the ideas, this gives me a lot to go on.