Hi all,
Looking to make a wood backed bow (Hickory or Boo I'm thinking but open to suggestions) and need some advise from the experts here on this site for the belly wood. Here is all I have available to me locally:
Red and White Oak, Maple, Mahogany, Cherry, Walnut, Cedar
Teak, Lacewood, Bubinga, Padauk, Zebrawood, Bloodwood, Purpleheart, Wenge, Morado, Canary
I have made two red oak board bows and looking for something a bit different. Thinking 64" (only a 25" draw),1 1/2-1 3/4 wide, and 3/8 at tips with a slight reflex, and a glue on riser. Looking for 55-60#. This is my next step before I tackle a tri-lam. Any help on woods that should be good to use would be greatly appreciated.
Make your life easier and order your bamboo and some osage or hickory from a bow wood supplier.
In no particular order:
Bamboo nad hickory is probably too strong for red or white oak unless you trap it to maybe 1/2 the width of the limb, but that might be a reasonable approach.
Hard maple is supposed to be pretty decent ... I've only use soft maple and it sucks.
Western red cedar is not really decent bow wood.
Eastern red cedar can work, but only a really nice clean knot free board is likely to make the weight you want, I'g guess. I'd also only back it with something like maple, or rawhide, probably not bamboo. Maybe severly trapped hickory.
Same for walnut.
Wenge is pretty strong and very nice but expensive.
Same for bubinga.
Purpleheart is easy to chrysal so I probably wouldn;t use it, plus they say it's hard as woodpeckers lips and will blunt all your tools.
Someone once told be zebrawood is a decent compression wood. Might consider that one ... and it's not prohibitively expensive.
Teak is not that dense, is oily, difficult to glue, and frankly, ridiculously expensive.
Not familiar with bloodwood, lacewood, paduak, morado or canarywood as bow woods.
Also there are extensive lists of bow wood by species in TBB and online: Google: "bow woods list"
might be worth just buying a nice piece of Ipe. Some lumberyards sell ipe stock ... might want to call around. Also tenbrook (sponsor on here) sells ipe and bamboo ...
I agree with John; osage first and then hickory are your best bets for a bamboo or hickory backed bow. I've tried cherry and walnut for the belly on hickory backed tri-lams and they've both chrysalled. That is a sinking feeling seeing your time and effort go down the drain. Pine Hollow sells osage boards and probably hickory as well.