Hey fellas, I just got a hold of some sassafras while working yesterday. I picked up a couple of medium size limbs to mess around with. I saw it listed in one of the bowyers bibles as a bow wood. But I've never worked with it before anyone have any thoughts on the wood?
I don't know about selfbows but for my personal glass recurve I used Sassafrass in the riser with IPE accents, made a beautiful bow and smells good when cutting and sanding.
Thanks James, I guess I'll just give it a whirl? I agree it is a good smelling wood.
Sassafras makes an awesome limb wood in a laminated longbow. It's very underated. Flat sawn, it is almost indistinguishable from red elm. I put quartersawn sassafras on the inside and flat sawn on the outside under the clear glass.
As a selfbow, I don't prefer it as it has to be boat paddle wide to take minimal set, or even survive.
sassafras plus selfbow = snapafrass .i have built three and none survived. makes for a fine lam under glass though. jeff
Thanks for the info guys, guess I'll make something else from it.
I've been toying with the idea of backing sassafras with sinew, anyone ever tried it? Would I just be wasting my time????Dan
I built a 45ish pound elb with it it''s still together buy took a bunch of set and is a real slug now. It is very soft wood but smell real good.....
I was just looking at some sassafrass trees the other day. I guess I won't cut any staves from it. I heard about peopl making ELB's from it but I don't really like those anyway. Mulberry is right next to it and osage is easy to get so I'll stick to that.