sweet gum?

[troutbum76]

I visited my dad today and he asked me to help hin remove a sweet gum tree. well of course my mind automaticallly thoght bow wood. the tree is 8 in in diameter and very straight grained. there was one knot half way up trunk but i cut around on each side. it got dark so i going to have to wait for tommorrow to split it. Is Sweet gum good bow wood?  Have only made board bows and want to play with some staves. i know it has to dry but will it be worth my time? He said i could cut down another so tommorrow i plan on doing a little browsing in the woods with my newly aquired tree id book and find another good one. my choices will consist of mostly oaks, elm and birch. What should i look for?

[Pat B]

Sweet gum will probably make a bow but you will play heck just trying to split it. If you are going to work that hard to get wood the elm would be a better choice. Oaks, ash, hickory, birch will all make bows. Where do you live? That will give a better idea what woods are indigenous to your area.

[troutbum76]

i live in ar but i am rigth outside of memphis tn at my fathers house

[Pat B]

You should have osage near there. That is the heart of osage country.  If not then the other woods I mentioned.

[troutbum76]

well i split the sweet gum. not to bad. got quite a few staves some pretty good. two of the staves have natural reflex deflex. i also cut an elm tree, it was pretty hard to split but i gotta it done. one piece didn't want to spilt straight but was able to get several pieces, another piece was what i think will make perfect bow wood, 6ft section perfectly straight straight grain, no knots. i will post some pics tomorrow when i get back home. my grandparents have a mulberry tree that they want down so my brother and i are going to take it down tommorrow. couple of sections are straight but fairly short i am going to spilt them so maybe someone with more skills would like to have them to make billets to splice. i might be able to use some of the limbs. when this weekednd is over i will have more wood than you shake a stick at. lol.

[Hillbilly]

Sweetgum is apparantly a decent bow wood, I've seen several nice SG bows posted on here over the years. It's sure easy to find through most of the South, and is often straight. Never tried it myself, but that's mostly because it doesn't naturally grow here in the mountains.

[Sparrow]

I'd make a really nice,long 50 lb. longbow out of that sweetgum and see how she shoots.If I remember correctly,sweetgum was a pretty wet wood.I would seal the ends of those staves with paint or something and let them dry for several months out of the rain. Good luck  Frank