Sami bow from Orbyhus castle

[sami bow]

years past, having collected some staves of black spruce compression wood from leaning trees, and some staves of yellow birch, I am now building 3 versions of Sami-style two wood bows.

The first bow will be a replica of the Ski-staff bow from Orbyhus castle in Sweden. For it I have a long, fairly straight stave of compression spruce. It had quite a few knots that were replaced with dutchman plugs of yew and compression spruce.  for the backing I have a strip of yellow birch carved from the outside surface of a stave. The birch is somewhat wavy and a little crooked. The only way I have found to straighten it is to grease it and heat with a heat gun, then hold in place till cooled somewhat. It wouldn't move at all with dry heat.

The belly is hopefully tapered well enough by me to be close to tiller when glued up, so I won't have to scrape too much compression wood from it.

I know the original is made from arctic birch and compression pine, but I have only been able to find compression black (swamp) spruce. I hope it works out.

I have a bunch of fish (sucker) air bladders for glue and lots of birch bark for backing.  Any advice on making godd glue will be appreciated.

I will continue on this project till I have several successful bows of the different types found. It may take awhile. Not a whole lot of info out there.

[DanaM]

I'll be interested to see how you make out with the black spruce, we also have lots of that here. Good luck
and keep us posted eh

[TBod]

Cool project!

In Sweden we call compressed Pine, (directly translated) Bull Pine.

Heres a link to some students who made that same replica, it's in Swedish though. (maybe you are from Sweden)

http://www.forntidateknik.z.se/IFT/MNTarb/2000/sambag.htm

[sami bow]

I am of Finnish and Sami descent, family has been in Minnesota, USA for 100+ years.

First time I read about a Sami bow, The book mentioned it was of pine and birch and I thought they were mistaken. After reading some of Ragnar Insulanders information, I became familiar with compression wood, and couldn't believe the difference. On the spruce I am familiar with, the regular wood is fairly soft, and the compression wood ilooks and feels like ivory, being totally different then normal wood.

Growing up in a farming and logging family, you would have though I would know about compression wood. The only thing I remember is my father telling me not to mill any leaning trees into lumber, as they will warp and twist terribly and move around with the moisture variations.

[TBod]

I think Spruce will work instead of Pine. The biggest advantage of using Pine is probably that it usally have less Branches on it.
The density of Spruce and Pine are about the same. The density of Bull Pine can be 3 times denser than normal probably tha same for Spruce. (I´m just repeating what I´ve seen else were on the internet)

[jorarn]

Hi Sami Bow.
I thought you might be interested in this, a replica of the Orbyhus bow, made by one of our best bowyers here in Norway, he has become quite an expert on the "two wood bows" and wrote his masters degree on them. You will find several other two wood replicas in his thread on the Norwegian bowforum Which of course is in Norwegian, but with plenty of pictures, you are welcome to post questions in English and no doubt there will be plenty of Norwegians eager to boast their language skills

[jorarn]

I just realized that Kviljo has quite few posts on this forum, I’m not sure if he has posted anything on the Orbyhus bow since it was finished though.

[sami bow]

Thank you , that was very helpful. I'm pleased some one is making Sami bows.