I have an osage tree near my house. Lady is kinda funny. Tree itself probably is no good for staves. It's about 3ft in diameter, knarly short stumped. Limbs are about over 1ft in diameter, lots of branches, and sure a bizzillion pins. But I was looking at some branchs.
Wonder if anyone ever took a whole branch that was uniform 1" and made a bow? It would have a highly radius'd back, and figured it would be a radiused belly too.
I have seen ELB's made of yew like this.
saw an awesome bow last year made from a root from osage tree.had never even heard of that.man it was a beautiful bow.
I've made good bows from 2" diameter shoot(upright) growth. The problem with limbs is you have to consider the compression and tension sides even more so than with shoots or trunks. Plus if the tree crown is all that gnarly it will be very difficult to remove the limb after cutting it.
On osage pole bows I've made I made flat bellies to go along with the high crown.
I figured you made one Pat.
How did that high crown flat belly bow shoot?
I am looking for a yew stave like that to show both sides of the sapwood on the top and bottom of the handle.
High crown and flat belly shoots well. This bow holds 4" of natural reflex(drew into reflex after splitting)after lots of shots. I actually had to reduce the reflex because it drew into over 6" of reflex and that is way too much for the bow I was building. This pole bow has a few sapwood rings on it also.
I don't mean to hijack your post.But when tah-gah-jute talked about a bow made of a osage root.I've looked a dozzen of bulldozzed up trees.All to properist.But I looked and thought about this for years eaven asked about it on a few post last year.
You remember how made this bow.I love to go and see this bow.