Just finished this Mulberry bow for a deer camp convert friend of mine :cool: Had a splinter raise on a knot close to the tip, so best fix was to cut 1 3/4" off to remove the splinter and re-tiller. This is the second bow I have built lately with a bottom limb shorter than the top close to 2 inches. Tell me if I got this backwards, I was reading some ones website and they said the short limb needed to be stiffer and not bend as much. But they feel better in the hand if the bottom limb has a little more bend in it. What do you think? 63" NTN 51#@ 28"
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The pics are hard to see for me. I just scored a cash of Mulberry. How do you like it? I assume you took the sapwood off. Nice bow from what I can see of her!
Tell me about Mulberry. I will be in Afghanistan pretty soon, and in my "free time" plan to get a hold of some mulberry. The only trees in the region are lots of poplars and cedars, but I have a local contractor in a shop lined up to ge me a log. Standard take off the sapwood and chase a ring?
You know I have heard all kinds of things about Mulberry, some say they like it others say they hate it and in the same breath praise osage. This is my experience, If I put osage and mulberry in a sack and shook them up I couldn't tell the difference.
Just like osage you get good pieces and bad. The common rule of thumb is you go 20% bigger than osage. This bow is the exact same as my osage formula except the short bottom limb. One thing I like about mulberry here is its large rings. This bow is barley 2 rings, here you can see the last of the second early growth ring, everything after that is less than 2 full rings.
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Sorry Pearl for the bad pictures, I really need a different camera, we have a 12 meg cannon but without photo software on this computer it will take 3 days to upload a picture to photobucket.
Yeah treat it exactly the same as osage, chase a ring of heart wood, most of the time I will go below the first ring under the sap wood. I just chased one stave that 3/4 down the stave the sap wood blended into the first ring. It had some speckled looking wood, I was afraid ot leave it although it looked cool.
I have dried it both ways, bark on and bark off. If you take the bark off take the sapwood off also, it has a milky goo that will cause it to crack when it drys, those checks can run into the heart wood.
Just took a couple of belly splits off some staves that had the bark on them. They been drying for about 7 months. This left me with some 2 to 3 inch thick staves. I decided to remove the bark and steam the staves and straighten them. It took a little longer to get them ready to bend but I believe they straightened much better like this then a roughed out bow with either heat or steam.
Nice
Paul Comstock wrote in TBB1 that the sapwood can stay on Mulberry? Hmmmmmm? I like the idea of not chasing a ring and leaving the back alone if possible.
I have pondered that also. Seen a sweet bow that had one thin ring of white sap on it looked awesome. I posted that question on here and found it is not very popular LOL. Most of the mulberry I have used has a thick course early growth between the sap and heart wood, But I am getting my wood from 10"+ logs. I am thinking maybe a sapling or half split might work.
But for a disclaimer it would take probably some one with Paul's skills to make it work.
If the ring chasing free wood is what you are looking for, next time I score some of our old swamp white oak I need to send you a piece, it is truly life changing LOL
I was given a 4 foot long by 10" straight mulberry trunk today. I plan on splitting and peeling tonite after work. The first bow from it will have all the sap wood intact. The rings are all at least 1/4" thick with virtually no early growth. Just good solid rings.
Awesome....... you know I have 2 63" (give or take) crooked staves that I have been undecided on what to do with, both have very little heart wood on one end, about two large rings. By the time they are worked down you will loose a ring. They have been drying about a year. I may have to do a preliminary r and d build for ya, just to see how it works.
There are perks to being an very poor youth director at a non profit. I dont have to wait until after work. Schools out and we are not that busy so I have a half dozen river cane shafts that will be going to work with me this after noon. I can show some of the boys how the native americans of our area made weaponry to feed themselves, get involved in a hobby that will occupy their minds and at the end of the day I can loosely call it work LOL LIFE is good!
You are a lucky man!