Cherry as a core wood?

[Lee Robinson .]

Doing some more research, I found that cherry was reported to have a specific gravity of only 0.5 (which is equal to red elm), but yet it is reported to have excellent compression strength, bending strength, stiffness, and hardness for such a light weight wood (in comparison to elm). It apparently has the strengths approximating that of maple, but with the light weight of elm.

This leads me to believe it might make a very good core wood in laminated bows. To date, I have only used a few figured veneers of cherry, but I have never used it in edge grain form as a core wood...and I am curious how well it might perform being used that way.

[kennym]

I've never done any testing with it, but it seems about like walnut from handling and cutting it.

[Dick in Seattle]

Made an all cherry glassed bow that came out very nice.   I've heard other reports of it working quite well  as core wood.   in fact, I've been told that most fruit wood will do well as core.  Almost bought some nice clear grained pear once, but the plank was impractically large and they wouldn't cut it.

[7 Lakes]

Cherry has a beauty that only improves with age, it grinds great, its stiff, light weight with excellent compression qualities.

You can't ask for much more.

[Swissbow]

I have used cherry in several bows as a core wood so far and it makes very fine and fast bows. The performance is almost the same as walnut. It draws a little harder, but it's still very nice to shoot.

----------
Andy

[inksoup]

here is the specs for cherry:
id|tree|elasticity
15|Cherry Black|1.49


elm:

id|tree|elasticity
19|Elm Eastern|1.37
20|Elm American|1.34
21|Elm Rock|1.54
22|Elm Slippery|1.49


maple:

id|tree|elasticity
36|Maple Bigleaf|1.45
37|Maple Black|1.62
38|Maple Red|1.64
39|Maple Silver|1.14
40|Maple Sugar|1.83


the elasticity values are important here. so it seems like cherry would be good bow wood.

best.

[Lee Robinson .]

Based off the numbers it looked like it would do well, but I saw some reports saying that when they make a bow from cherry they had to use more core to obtain the same pull weight.  That does not make sense to me. One would think if it had just as good as qualities you would not need anymore core. As mentioned earlier I have only used it as a figured burl veneer, but sure enough that bow came in underweight...so I am a little perplexed about the qualities of cherry as a core wood. I would like to try some quality edge grain cherry as a core to compare it to my favorite....edge grain red elm.

[canopyboy]

I know you guys are talking glass bows, but I keep thinking one of my next bows was going to be cherry with hickory back and belly.  Can't get the idea out of my head.

[Bowjunkie]

I've used cherry in glass bows as well as backed them with hickory. I love that stuff... works easily and doesn't load up or dull tools, not oily and glues up and finishes readily, very pretty flat grain under clear glass(sometimes looks a lot like yew), diffuse porous rings with moderately closed grain, readily available. No problem with weight, it holds it's own. The last cherry glass bow I made was 70# @ 28", as predicted.

In selfbows or backed all-wooden bows, it's barely acceptable in my opinion. The good thing about THAT is, it will force you to refine your design and tillering skills.

I haven't done it yet, but I'm guessing it would be the perfect wood to put between boo and osage in a tri-lam.

[stickmonkey]

I used cherry for some time as it was easy to get at the local saw mill and it works just fine. I build glass bows and never had an issue with it. I built a couple one pc bows that were called cherry blossom as the core was all cherry with wild cherry riser, Pw and Tw's. Sweet shooter and still in service

[ChristopherO]

I built 3 recurve FG bows last fall/winter with edge grain red elm lams and colored FG and one bow with figured cherry lams and clear FG of the same lam thicknesses.  The cherry came out light compared.  Beautiful but lighter by quite a bit.  
My experience.

[SveinD]

Originally posted by inksoup:
here is the specs for cherry:
id|tree|elasticity
15|Cherry Black|1.49


elm:

id|tree|elasticity
19|Elm Eastern|1.37
20|Elm American|1.34
21|Elm Rock|1.54
22|Elm Slippery|1.49


maple:

id|tree|elasticity
36|Maple Bigleaf|1.45
37|Maple Black|1.62
38|Maple Red|1.64
39|Maple Silver|1.14
40|Maple Sugar|1.83


the elasticity values are important here. so it seems like cherry would be good bow wood.

best.

Inksoup, where'd you get the numbers?
Are there more woods to add to that?