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.
Buy Dean's book Here!
The Stickbow's very own Dean Torges has authored his first
book - Hunting the Osage Bow A must for anyone
with a traditional library or a inkling to shave a stave!
Check out Dean's site at www.stickbow.com/torges |
