Q & A - Volume 2, June / July '98

 

Perry Corsetti asks:

Do you need to tiller a wood bow that will be shot Apache style (three fingers under) differently?  I am mainly concerned with bows of the design Dean writes about with the lower limb being shorter than the upper limb.

Dean Torges: Yes, you need to make the lower limb stiffer than the upper limb because it receives more strain than it would if pulled split-fingered, Mediterranean style. Regardless of which way you shoot, if the bow is fully drawn and tillered correctly for its style--which even includes hand placement upon the grip--the tiller should look the same from bow to bow. That's why you need to change limb mass to compensate for different fulcrum pressures.


Dale (Snap Shot) Sharp asks:

I'm green. My vine maple is green. I found last evening that the bark comes off very easy while it's green.  Is it ok to scrape the bark off a freshly cut stave?

Secondly, I found some vine that had been pushed over by a dozer in early prep for developing (if you can call it that) some land.  Even though it was lying down it was leaving out.  I took one 6' piece and got three decent looking staves out of it.  It seems less sappy than a healthy fresh cut tree.  Does it have a chance of making a bow?  If so, I'd like to rescue as much of that stand as I can and put it to use.

John Strunk: Vine maple should be peeled when green. It is much easier to do a good job without injuring the bow's future back. Saw or chop away the other half of the log. I only use one side of a trunk section, that being the tension wood. I prefer 1-1/2"-3" diameter material. The tension side is the up surface. All vine maple grows from a root clump; and,therefore, they all lean away from the base. The compression wood is weak.

You can shape out your bow the day you cut down the tree, more correctly, a bush. This allows the wood to dry quickly. I commonly build a bow from green wood in 10 days using this method.

Yes, the piece you salvaged will have good, sound wood. The only problem...you can't be sure of where the tension side was to locate the back of your bow. Taking more than one stave from a vine maple section just doesn't make the best bow.


Tim Thomas asks:

Just suppose you wound up somewhere surrounded by totally unfamiliar trees and you wanted to make a bow, is there some way you could select a likely bow wood just from the general appearance of the wood? Obviously systematic testing by making small bows or testing the bending characteristics of small (seasoned) billets would be best but time consuming.

Paul Comstock: Bow making is sort of like life. There are no guarantees. I can't imagine judging the suitability of a strange tree from looking at the tree alone. If looking at a wood, I would give it a try if it appeared fairly dense and heavy. That, of course, would guarantee nothing. The most reliable, time-effective test would be the small bow you mentioned.  I prefer to invest 30 minutes in a small bow than risk wasting six hours on a big one that might fail entirely.


Dale Holmstrom asks:

I recently made a 67# yew ELB and love it.  I want to make more versions of this classic, beautiful design, but can't bring myself to spend lots of money on yew staves and billets.  Since I have plenty of osage orange and other hardwoods at hand, can I make an efficient, hard hitting, classic ELB that is "D" bellied with these woods? What dimensions would you recommend?

Murray Gaskins: You bet you can. This is something that I have personally been working on because of historical perspective and bias. Moisture control is critical. The ELB design is going to have a tendency to take more set because of being narrow, so you need to be careful about stacking all the cards in your favor at the outset.

In building ELB designs, I noticed that white wood and osage staves held their profiles better when I was able to use well dried, naturally reflexed staves. I have also obtained excellent results with Bamboo backed ELB designs, using both white wood, mulberry and osage cores.

As for measurements, I have come up with a method that works for me and has been useful in calculating limb thickness and width. The specific density of the wood is the factor. If you have a piece of yew that is say .7 and you have a 1 inch wide bow and the number for Osage is .80. I divide .8 into .7 and come up with .874 x 1 (width) and you are at your starting place. One last point: I try to make my handles work a little rather than be totally rigid. This is personal preference, but it has, I think, had a positive influence in the lack of set in the bows.


Randy Dudley asks:

Would walnut make a good self bow? I have a supply of walnut but have been hesitant to build from it not having heard of other successes.

Paul Comstock: I have seen several types of walnut work well in wooden bows, when using a design that works well with white woods (ash, elm, oak, etc.) A black walnut bow can consist of either heartwood or sapwood, or a combination of the two.  If the wood is only slightly decomposed, most white woods will break fairly easily. Walnut fits in this category.  Avoid any wood that has been cut and left on the ground outdoors for any length of time. (If it needs to be mentioned, osage is highly resistant to rot and can make a bow even if left lying outdoors for 10 years.)


Steve Schanzer asks:

I am trying to build an osage orange static recurve. The growth rings for the first 3/4 inch or so are less than 1/16 inch thick. I went down about 5 rings. They start getting thicker about another 3 rings down, but because of a large knot that is running through the side about 30 inches down from one end of the stave, I decided to not go down further. This knot causes a large "knee" (like a human knee--the best I can describe it) at that point and it is almost as all the growth rings come to the surface in that area. My problem is that there is no way I can lay out the bow on the stave without having a knot on the edge of one of the working limbs. Should I cut the knot out and patch the limb? Or should I cut it out and follow the same curve on the opposite side? I would like the bow to be sinew backed and 60 inches long. Although I have built some great shooters from ash, hickory, and yew, this is my first attempt with osage. It was supposed to have been a beginner's stave but, this one is full of knots and places where the grain essentially changes direction.

Murray Gaskins: First off you need to clean off the rings on top as you have done, then follow the grain on the top of the limb maintaining width as well as thickness on the side with a pencil. You can follow the rings easily this way and not cut through or cut out the knot. You are only borrowing trouble if you do that.


John Melson asks:

I just finished gluing a tri-composite, all hickory, bow together. The bow is 60" between nocks, 1 1/2 " at the fade outs, 1 1/4" mid limb tapering out. The 3/16" hickory laminates were stacked as follows; edge cut for the back, quarter sawed used in the center core, and plain sawed hickory to make the belly.  Dean, Paul , Murray and other GOMs do you agree or disagree on the order I used to stack these laminates? If you disagree, then how and why would you have stacked the laminates for a good working bow of 55#. I recently completed a 66" 40# @ 27" hickory backed osage composite. 3/16 hickory lam, roughly 4/16 osage board. This bow is 1 3/8" at fade outs straight tapering to nocks. Nocks built up with bubinga 1/2 inch and shaped for slight recurve effect. This bow was glued with 2 1/2" reflex.Handle on this bow is very much like the one I am building, ( 1" thick by about 2" deep,bulbous, with overlay, back of handle is slightly rounded then flattens into the fade outs). This bow took very little and gentle tillering and after about 800 shots it still has a slight reflex. This bow is what I used to base my judgment for configuring the tri-composite.

Paul Comstock: Your proposed laminate configuration has the potential to make a fine bow, given decent hickory and all other things being equal. Based on the judgment of wood experts, there should be a slight advantage to making the belly quarter sawn, since quarter sawn is ostensibly slightly stronger in compression than flat-ringed wood. But the percentage of strength gained is probably so slight an advantage that some other factor (or error) in construction could easily wipe it out. Successful bow making requires successfully juggling a large number of factors and a bad mistake with just one will break the bow. For this reason, it is risky to put too much faith in one building material or building method.  The dimensions of your proposed hickory bow will require expert tillering. Anything less will create noticeable or even excessive string follow. Starting with reflex and using a bulbous handle (which allows more bending near the handle) are good ideas to minimize string follow. But for 55 pounds at 27 inches, I would personally go wider and/or longer. Your osage bow succeeded because of the osage (high compressive strength), the length (which reduces strain on the bow), and the beginning reflex. Another little danger: What is sold as hickory in lumber stores often is ash, pecan, or something else, and doesn't work as well as hickory.


Filippo Cavalieri asks:

I have been experimenting with glue-on syiahs and Grumley's recurves. Much to my surprise, it's not the glue-ons that gave me trouble: with TBII they are perfectly stable. It's the tillering: stringing the bow for the first time is harder than with a straight stave design and the syiahs afford more leverage: as a result, I end up with over-tillered and/or chrysalled bellies. Sorry for the long intro; here are the questions: is there a special way to tiller recurves? and for a chrysalled belly, can one plane it and "back" (belly?) it with hickory? If yes, any special precautions?

Joe Don Jones: Tillering static recurves can be frustrating to say the least, its extremely hard to floor tiller because of the recurved tips. A tillering stick will help in getting both limbs bending close at first from brace height or less.  I use a string that's longer than the bow and start pulling or flexing the limbs while it's one the board, making sure I never pull it past  the imaginary brace height of 4-5". Once you get both limbs bending evenly, you can string it up at a low brace height and go to your tillering board to finish the job.  On bows that have compression fractures or chrysalls, you can save a bow by sanding the belly flat and adding osage or hickory, my favorite being osage.  This can only be done as long as the fracture is not from edge to edge.


Barney asks:

OK, so this piece of osage I've been cutting on bends!  (It's my first bow and that is very exciting.) Now I want to sinew it. I have some dried elk sinew and some hide glue (in powdered form). Unfortunately, when I got it, there was no one at the shop that day who knew how to use it. I have a general idea on what needs to be done, but I want specifics before I start this endeavor.

Also I have a very small crack in the sap wood on one limb, small enough that it doesn't show up until the bow is flexed enough to string. Will the sinew keep this from breaking? I hope.

Paul Comstock: Pound or reduce the sinew to white threads. Melt the glue in hot water. Dip some threads in. Wring them off. Lay them on the back of the bow. Repeat the above about 400 times. To be honest, there isn't enough room here to thoroughly discuss everything about sinewing. I urge you to delay this job until you get some instruction from someone at that shop, or from one or more of a number of bow making books and manuals available.

Some pitfalls to avoid: Keep the melted glue to about 120 degrees. Too hot and your sinew will shrivel in the pot. Keep everything clean. Sand the back of the bow clean just before you start preparing the glue. Avoid using too much glue or the back will crack noisily with each draw. Make sure you lay the sinew threads down in straight lines, parallel with the limb edges. Failure to do this will reduce the amount of tension work the sinew can perform. Your question suggests the bow still has white sapwood on the back. If so, there is some danger, perhaps slight, that the sinew will pull the sapwood from the heartwood. With yew, this is a definite danger. Good luck. Sinewing over a small crack on the back can be expected, 99 percent of the time, to keep the crack from affecting the bow.


Gordon Focht asks:

For the first time selfbow maker, which video do ya'll recommend? 1. Stickery Home School.  2. Billets to Bows. 3. Murray Gaskins' tapes.

Murray Gaskins: The best thing you can do to get yourself jump-started down this road is to get a copy of Murray's tape BUILDING BOWS FROM THE WHITE WOODS and a copy of Paul Comstock's THE BENT STICK. The book and video amount to companion pieces detailing the same approach to building your first bows. The video takes you from selecting and felling the tree to tillering your finished bow. Three bows get built in this 2 hour video, there's a lot of information in this tape.


Mike O'Bryan asks:

I have about 15 staves of hickory drying in my basement and I'm having a problem them twisting and warping real bad. I need to know a method on how to steam them straight: how to make the steamer: the form and the process by which it is done.

Dean Torges: I would urge you to buy a copy of Hunting the Osage Bow, a Chronicle of Craft. I don't know of a more thorough explanation of the steaming process. The book addresses each one of your concerns and provides detailed solutions.


Tom Leemans asks:

Wondering if anyone has done a mulberry/hickory composite bow before and how did it turn out. What would you recommend for gluing the hickory backing on?

Murray Gaskins: I have built several of the bows you are interested in. Mulberry and hickory make a great combination for an all wood composite; it's difficult to come up with a better all around combination in my opinion. The performance will be as good as you are going to get with about any combination you might try.

As for glue, I have had great results with Resorcinol, Smooth On, Urac 85 and  most recently with West System Epoxy. It'll be hard to go wrong with any combination of these glues and woods. 


John Krause asks:

I am working on my first selfbow, osage. The bow is roughed out and ready to start tillering. I have really been taking my time. One limb is flawless and I have made it the bottom limb. The upper limb gets a little snaky towards the nock end and has a knot on the edge of the limb but it does not go very far into the limb. The upper limb is also bent sideways a bit. I'm sure it needs to be bent sideways so the nocks line up better. My questions are: Is the knot on the edge of the limb going to doom me to failure and how should I bend the upper limb sideways? I was wanting an unbacked bow. I probably should have picked a better piece of wood for my first bow, but it has been a learning experience.

Murray Gaskins: Knots on edges of bow limbs are potentially dangerous to the life of your bow, particularly if the knot is in a highly stressed section of the limb. If the knot does not go very far into the limb, it may be eliminated by narrowing the limbs evenly or by wrapping with glue-soaked string or sinew.

If you want to straighten out the limb, lay the section to be bent over a boiling pot of water, inside an aluminum foil "tent". The limb should be left there for about 30 minutes, you should bend the limb quickly slightly past where you want it to remain after bending and hold it there till it cools.  You might leave it there over night since the wood will want to return to its original position.   


Chris Claycomb asks:

I am really interested in making a Perry style reflex and have read all the relevant bits in the "Traditional Bowyers Bible". I understand that there are certain ratios of backing to core that work well for the different combinations of wood (I was going to use all hickory, baking=1/3 total thickness). Is this ratio meant to be kept constant for the whole length of the bow (so the backing must be of a tapered thickness), or, is the thickness meant to be uniform and the tiller achieved by pyramid type limbs? Are the limbs to be reflexed by the use of a special form, or can it be done in some other manner (this is for about 2-3 inches of reflex)? Can I use the same pattern and dimensions (as per the Bowyer's Bible for a Perry Reflex as I do for my normal hickory board bows?

If these bows are as good as they claim might there not be enough interest for an article on them to appear in, say Traditional Bowhunter?

Paul Comstock: These bows are, in my experience, indeed "as good as they claim." In my view they are a considerable innovation and there is only one person who deserves to write about them in a magazine: Dan Perry, the man who conceived the procedure and shared it. I would leave it to his choice. A Perry bow can work successfully with a backing of uniform thickness and the belly wood thickness tapered. In fact, I would never attempt to do it any other way. Making the back one-third of the thickness at the tips would work well with a hickory-hickory bow. I think most of the time you will find a thickness of one-fifth at the tips will work equally well with hickory-hickory. With some other woods, a thin hickory  back is needed to avoid excessive compression on the belly. Bamboo backs with the Perry design should be as thin as possible to avoid compression problems. I have not be able to produce a successful Perry bow without a form. If I make a normal 55-60 pound solid hickory bow, it will be two inches wide a mid-limb. The same weight with a Perry bow I would make 1.25 inches wide at mid-limb.

Perry bows are time-consuming to build and  I think require good power planing equipment to control production of the backs effectively. Tillering them can be tricky. I  believe no Perry bow should ever be strung without a bow stringer. By using the step-through or push-pull stringing method, it is possible to load to much initial bend into one limb. A bow in this condition, drawn can go permanently out of tiller after a few shots. I believe the level of skill required for Perry bows makes them a poor choice for novice bow builders.


Chad Fowler asks:

I've been wondering about Massey's epoxy/acetone finish. Among other things, my wife and I are also buckskinners and we happen to have a lot of woodenware. My question: could this finish be used on wooden utensils or would it leave a nasty odor/taste behind? How about toxic residue?

Dean Torges: It would be dangerous to cover woodenware with this finish. Look in any woodworking catalog and in the section for finishes you will discover non-toxic salad bowl finishes.


Matt Ulberg asks:

Using your posted instructions for all-wood laminated bows from the homepage: At the string nocks, how much of the belly-wood lamination should remain, thickness-wise? I understand that the "quarter-sawn back-lam should be full-depth, but what about the thicker belly lam? Also, how critical are thin glue lines?

Dean Torges: Thickness of belly lamination depends on outline choice you make for the bow, on how much you decide to take from the sides. If the end of your stave measures out to the recommended 7/8" wide, by 1/2" thick, and if you remove wood from the belly and the two sides in an even taper beginning from each side of the handle area, then the end of you stave, at the nocks, should measure a little less than 1/2" wide by a little less than 3/8" thick, including the 1/8th inch backing piece.

Glue lines in these bows are not critical at all between backing and belly, but I would suggest a catalyzed glue like Urac or Resorcinol with its gap filling properties over white glue if you are mating particularly rough surfaces. Glue line is more critical if you glue on a riser handle. Glue choice, too. Do your best work there.


Question:

I want to glue some snake skins on a sinewed selfbow.  The skins are leather tanned.  They are not glycerin tanned (that is, not oily to the touch).  Do I need to wet these  skins before gluing them to the bow? Also, since I am using hide glue, how long do I have to wait for the snake skins to dry.

Murray Gaskins: With material like this, I have had good results by wetting skins with hide glue (that's a little on the watery side), and pressing them on. Assuming: fairly low humidity, use of powdered hide glue, and no sinew under the covering, two or three days should do it.


Eric Krewson asks:

Can you make a reflex/deflex self bow. What sparked my interest in this subject is the picture of Dean and Cliff with a hog on page three of Tom Mussatto's web site. The bow appears to be an r/d self bow made by Dean. Either it is r/d or has a bunch of string follow.

Dean Torges: A bow is made r/d to make it more efficient: less limb does more work. Ok when you are using glass (which, I think, is stronger in compression that tension), but when you have wood bellies which in fully bending 62" lengths are already reaching their elastic limits in compression , and you then ask those bellies to do even more work in shorter lengths by going r/d, you are asking for beaucaup trouble. Saxton Pope upped James Duff by concluding that a fully drawn bow is 9/10ths broken.

Takes a great deal of skill in tillering, based upon much experience, to bring this off in wooden bows. One reason that I do this in composite bows is that I can use quarter sawn belly wood, which has a slightly higher compressive value than plain sawn (which is the ring orientation of self bows). Even then, you have to use a great deal of finesse and understanding to bring it off. Frankly, the performance results do not really justify the hazard or the effort. If you follow the principles that I laid out to prevent string follow in the TBM series, you will probably be further ahead in every respect and gain much valuable experience.

Then, when you get bored, instead of taunting old men for amusement, you can try your hand at r/d self bows.


Bryan Wynn asks:

Have you tried any wood(s) that just did not work for making bows? I have a large Myrtle tree in my yard, have any of you tried to make a self-bow from that?

Murray Gaskins: I have made several bows from Crepe Myrtle. I found the wood to be tight ringed and dense. The difficulty was in finding a straight piece of the stuff and someone who would let me cut it when I did locate it. I finally got some when a city lot was being cleared. I found the wood to be tight ringed and dense. The cast was fast, the wood is fine for making bows, supplies however are very limited.

There have been a very few woods that have not worked out for me when trying to make self bows. A few notable failures that immediately come to mind are pines, such as we have here in the South, and willow. There are so many woods that will make bows it is unusual to run into one that won't. What you end up with in many woods may not be the most efficient performer, but if you make it long and wide enough it'd probably get the job done.  


Terry Everson asks:

I have a chance to cut a pacific yew tree. What should I look for in the tree?  Thanks for any suggestions.

John Strunk: Terry, I don't know how much bow making experience you have. Experience allows you to better judge a tree for the amount of bow material it may have. I find the yew tree to be somewhat sacred; therefore, it must have enough wood for 3-4 bows before I will cut it.

If you plan on cutting this tree, make sure you look it over very closely. You can tell if there is twist by studying the bark. The section chosen for a bow should be free of limbs, twigs, scars, etc. Most yew trees will have sections long enough or billets (approximately 40"), but few full-length staves. Therefore, you will need to splice the billets to make a piece long enough for your bow.

My suggestion would be to buy a piece of yew for your first bow. However, if you are experienced at bow making and have cut other bow woods, then by all means, go for it!


Brod Jackson asks:

I read the selfbow article in stickbow and I was very pleased that there were much better ways to making a bow other that carving it out of a log which I have tried (unsuccessfully). Unfortunately the elm I have seems slightly brittle or splintery and has snapped when I made a self bow out of it. Do you think I could make a bow out of it by using around 4 laminates ranging from 1-2.5 mm thick and gluing them together to make a more flexible stave which could be rasped and planed into shape after. Do you think this method would make an effective bow or do I need to get some better wood?

Dean Torges: Better ways, I dunno. There are other ways. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.

Gluing laminations together makes a stave more rigid, less flexible. Elm is by nature "splintery", if I know what you mean. If the elm was indeed at fault (the cause of your breakage) rather than your tillering mistakes, then something in its curing process has caused decay and deterioration, or else brittleness, and would also render it unsuitable for laminations. 

The technique of laminating pcs together itself makes for easier bow building, the the method you describe will work for you.


Curt Noetzold asks:

I just made a beautiful bamboo backed osage bow; problem is a sliver of bamboo pulled up by the rest that i cut in. I wrapped it with thread and it seems to be holding. Ever hear of this?

Dean Torges: I have even seen bamboo lift a sliver from mid limb. Glued down and wrapped, it stayed. However, yours may or may not hold because of its location, which makes it a purchase place for evil demons. See the following question/answer.


David Poole asks:

I have now broken two bows made from laminations of maple and red oak (the only wood I could get). I never got to shoot the first bow, but did get to shoot the second bow. It actually shot well, and I was sad it broke. My third bow is made from ash and hickory. I laminated the ash back (quarter sawn) to the hickory belly (flat sawn) using Titebond one part water proof glue. The bow is reflexed while being glued. it is 72" long with 1 7/8 wide limbs. I will cut an arrow shelf in, but not as deep as the last bow I broke! The bow is tillering out to around 50-55 pounds. Am I on the right track? I am unsure that the ash back should be quarter sawn. I am good at building furniture, but bows are new to me.

Dean Torges: I am no fan of cutting sight windows into wooden or composite bows. Without clues where (and, hence, why) your bows broke, I'm guessing the arrow shelf done you in because of your decision to make the cut smaller on the third bow. My advice: eliminate it altogether.

Ash and hickory are better choices for a laminated bow than maple and red oak, but I would have reversed them, using the hickory for the backing. Ash is ring porous and shows dramatic differences between earlywood and latewood (spring and summer growth), so if you expose a ring through a plain sawn cut, you are asking for the same trouble you get by cutting through a growth ring on a self bow. You can get by with a plain sawn backing of hickory, but I would always choose quarter sawn for this application whenever possible.


Steve Jackson asks:

Is one bow design preferred over others for certain species of wood?  I would like to make both an English longbow and a flat selfbow but do not know which woods will work better with which design?  I have access to ash, elm, and hickory but would also like to know for yew and osage just in case.

Paul Comstock: Any wood that will make a selfbow will work well with a flatbow design. Woods with high compression strength (Osage and yew) can be narrower and/or shorter than woods like ash, elm, and hickory. If shooting for 55-70 pounds and using a narrow, rigid handle, I would make the white wood bow as tall as the archer and two inches wide at mid limb. With Osage or yew, I would make the same design 1.25 to 1.5 inches wide at mid limb. Yew is generally considered the best choice for an English bow. Some complain that the heavier Osage tends to have more hand shock with an English design. This can be reduced, I believe, by keeping bending in the handle to as little as possible. Other woods have been used successfully with the English design, particularly if wider and/or longer than the normal yew dimensions: Mulberry and cedar in particular. Cedar is a touch weak in tension and most people would back a cedar bow. Even with yew, I would make the bow a couple of inches taller than the archer. For 50 pounds and above I would never make the yew bow narrower than 1.25 inches at mid limb. I have seen yew bows as narrow as an inch at mid limb, but I consider each I have seen to have excessive string follow.


Gregg Bergeron asks:

The next selfbow project I am planning is a short bow design.  The bow will be made from osage and I was wondering what should the limb width be for a 54-52" @ 50 lbs. and draw 26-27 inches.  Is there anything special that should be done with short bows?

Dean Torges: That's short. This bow must bend through the handle, its full length, and be tillered in the classic way, so that it describes a perfect arc at full draw, distributing stresses its total length. Best that you do not make this bow out of a stave reflexed over an inch or so, and that you teach it to bend slowly so that it does not suffer compression failure. If it does, on usually the lower limb, it will tend to follow the string excessively and the bow will have no cast and still deliver hand shock from out of sequence limbs.


Bruce Snyder asks:

Could one of you GOMs briefly describe how to fashion and apply limb tip overlays on a straight-limbed self bow (hardwood, antler or horn)? Specifically, how to cut it, how thick, rough shaping, gluing, final shaping and cutting string nocks?

Murray Gaskins: A limb tip overlay is an attractive and functional touch you can apply to your bow.  Osage, horn or other contrasting material accents your bow's appearance and is very helpful, particularly if you have very narrow limb tips. All you need to do is flatten the crown of the tip and glue up whatever material you intend to use for a tip. Cut the overlay material thicker than it will end up being. I use a band saw or table saw to make a small piece of veneer from which to fashion tips.  I generally shoot for about 1/4 inch to begin with then go from there. Shape the overlay with a fine rasp, then sand it smooth. A thin overlay on a narrow tip helps by giving room for a string groove channel across the back that does not actually cut into the bow limb at the nocks. I use a 1/8 inch, round chainsaw file to cut the string grooves. About any epoxy or wood glue would work fine I think. I have Walnut overlays on a Mulberry bow, glued on with TB2, that have been there for almost 5 years of hard use. 


Tim Thomas asks:

I was wondering about ancient European bows like Meare Heath etc. It seems that these were pretty good bows given their time, place and the tools they were made with.  But they were found in bogs, right.  Maybe these were the worst of the lot.  Maybe some guy missed his deer, threw the thing in the nearest bog, went home and clubbed his bow maker to death. Then went on to get a much better bow from someone else, kept it until his village was burned down by barbarians.  It could be that the bows that have been found were not typical and maybe even made for some religious purpose. This could also explain why they are found in bogs and also design features like not following a back ring etc.  What do you think?

Paul Comstock: You have a valid premise up to a point. When you are talking about 4,000 years ago, there are a lot of details we will never know. Did these people make ceremonial bows that were functional (and perhaps shot repeatedly) before being deliberately destroyed? It wouldn't be impossible. But the bog bows represent a period of a couple of thousand years and a wide expanse of Europe. It's unlikely that every single one was sacrificed or thrown away on purpose. Remember, a bog is basically a really old marsh or swamp, and that wouldn't be a bad place to bowhunt. Read "The Witchery of Archery;" The Thompson brothers spent lots of time hunting in such wetlands.

Yes, some bows from bogs apparently did not follow one ring; but  such a method can produce good bows these days, too, if the cut-through rings are mainly straight lines parallel with the sides of the limbs.


Kelly Floyd asks:

Does poplar make a good selfbow?

Dean Torges: No.


Dwight asks:

I have a new osage stave with beautiful quarter inch growth rings.  The stave has a natural one to two inch back set.  My question is about tillering and the back set. Should I tiller as a normal stave or change methods considering the back set.  I'm a novice bowyer with only eight or ten bows behind me.  (4 or 5 shoot great)  Any advice on the subject would be appreciated.  Thanks!

Dean Torges: The more reflex a stave has, the more difficult it is to lay out the design so that the tips travel through the center of the handle. Sounds to me like you have an ideal stave and at two inches should not cause you much problem. Leave a little extra width in the tips until you can determine how accurately the bow keeps its line. Unbraced and relaxed, the stave should be about straight. Otherwise, it should look at full draw just like any other well-tillered self bow that shows more string follow. The difference will be that it will shoot harder.


Claudio Lopez asks:

I have a white mulberry tree in my back yard I know white mulberry grow larger than red mulberry but is the wood as good for making selfbows.

Murray Gaskins: The woods of both red and white mulberry are very much the same for building bows. They are both great for our use and deserve much more attention than they get. If I had to pick only one wood to build bows from, mulberry, red or white, would be a very strong contender.


Shane Welch asks:

I'm in South Carolina for the summer and would like to make a selfbow or longbow out of native wood. Which wood would be best considering I'll be working with green stock; ash, elm, hickory, honey locust, river willow, or any others?

Paul Comstock: I'd go with hickory or elm. With those two, the only limitations are the bowmaker's ability. Ash comes in a variety of types and many, like black ash and blue ash, are weak. (Which means the bow also will be weak.) White ash is great if you're sure that's what you've got. Ditto red ash and green ash. Honey locust I have no experience with and any willow will be weak.


Jim Heflin asks:

This is my first attempt at making a bow, and I don't want to mess it up.  I bought a stave from a reputable outfit, and it is probably well within specs, but, as I begin shaping it out, I am faced with a twist (maybe an inch or an inch-and-a-half from one end to the other).  Oh, yeah, it's white ash.  My inclination is to shape it down to a rectangular form, thin it down roughly, apply steam and try to straighten it out before trying to make it resemble a bow.  Is this the right way to go?

Paul Comstock: If you leave the outer ring intact, your plan should work. However, bear in mind that the amount of twist in your stave is not extreme if the wood is at least 66 inches long. Consider that if you reduce the tip width to a half inch, what appears to be an inch of twist on the stave's edges might be reduced down to 1/8-inch in the final bow. If you are interested in durability, cast, and accuracy, the twist means nothing. If you are interested in cosmetics, go ahead and steam it.


Jeff Coggins asks:

I would like to know the best way to determine if I should fill a small worm hole in an osage stave. The hole is on the belly of the bow about 2/3 of the way from the handle. It is a round hole about the size of a toothpick and was not visible on the stave until I started noticing a darker section as I sanded the bow. I have only just begun the tillering task. Thanks again for all your help.  I'll make a bow of this thing yet.

Dean Torges: A worm hole uncovered late in the effort? Rats! Its size sounds like the work of a powder post beetle hole but its method of operation suggests otherwise, and it's most likely this damage was done upon the living tree rather than after the tree was cut (when beetles usually commence with eating). Also, beetles always work in from the bark side of osage and usually only confine their eating to the sapwood. As such, they always they leave a clear trail, an entrance hole, and the wood does not stain around their damage once it is cut. Beetles and grubs that eat from the outside in are discouraged with a wet coat of Diazinon sprayed upon the log or the stave soon after it is cut.

I have seen large grubs encapsulated in bow wood, but never small beetle holes. The size you describe need not be fatal to your efforts if it travels pretty much from belly to back, in a radial direction. As such, its effect upon the bow would be almost as though it were a pin knot. If it travels tangentially, however, left to right across the bow, then you are in trouble. Filling will not work and the traditional sorts of Dutchmen's Plugs that the old books advocate cause eventual compression failures around the plug with repeated use. Worse yet, yours could not be in a more dangerous position on the bow.

If you can work a three-cornered file across the damage so that you eliminate the worm hole with a vee trough, do it and then cut a male piece of wood to fit it, angle and length, and seat it in a bed of resorcinol. Lay the file as much as you can to one side and another to flatten out the vee channel while still maintaining its uniformity. You don't want the channel as severe as it comes off the file. This is your best hope short of abandoning the stave. (Make sure the glue is absolutely, thoroughly dry before working the bow. Give it a week in good drying conditions.)


Mike Rainey asks:

I just recently got some osage that has been on the ground for a while. It was a little wormy under the sap wood. Can one layer of growth ring be taken down without affecting the back of the bow. If so, then I have some good clean osage to use.

Dean Torges: I made a bow years ago from an osage fence post that a neighbor cut and laid with others on the ground 40 years before. Groundhogs tunneled through the stack and heaped dirt over it. Still have the bow. A good one.

Work to a growth ring below worm damage. Make sure the piece is thoroughly dried before you begin bending it (it is probably almost as much moisture laden as freshly cut wood, regardless of how long ago it was felled, so treat it as such). You should be just fine.

 

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