I have this nice Maple stave taken from a fallen tree (a tiny bit of blueing in the outer wood), but I know it will make a bow as I made a little one out of it earlier in the year).
The stave has perfectly symetrical slightly recurved tips
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The interesting factor is it's 89" long
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I figure that with that length and the recurce tips I should be able to get a nice high initial draw weight and that the weight will increase very smooth and slow.
So, in theory this should give a lot of stored energy, of course, this will be offset by increased limb mass and inertia.
I'll try to tiller it to give 75# at 28" the same as my Yew long bow, that way I'll be able to compare like with like.
It will probably be ponderous and cumbersome, but of course I can reduce the length and re-tiller.
With the extreme length it should take a classic longbow D cross section.
So guys, whadda ya think it will shoot like?
The draw weight is dissapointingly low, there's that whole geometry thing going on whereby it takes 60# to get it back to bracing height on a long string, but the angles change with the shorter string and it's only 48# at 28" I took it right back to 32", slight string follow. It shoots ok, but the darned thing is so cumbersome it's a pig to get the damn string on it!
It's a bit of fun, I shall take it to the field shoot tomorrow. The wood isn't good enough to take being much shorter, the moral is use Maple for flat bows or cores.
I plotted the draw weight graph, it's not much different to the flat bow designs, perhaps a tad flatter, I'd have learned more if the draw weight had been higher, but I think I'd have needed Yew or Ash for that.
Maybe I'll tinker with it sometime when I havn't got a project on the go.
Del
(PS, I'm sure this will have been done before, but it's always instructive to have a play...)
