Questions for people who have made a mulberry selfbow with the sapwood on...

[toomanyknots]

Well I want to use mulberry to make some high weight elbs with the sapwood on, as I really like mulberry and this stuff I get is strong like osage but very light, so I would think it would make an excellent longbow/light weight warbow. But these pin knots are horrendous on small logs to even huge logs, to get a good finish on the bow I have to sand down and violate the back ring about 1000 times just to get sanded the pointing little things down. I've did this before on mulberry but not on anything over 65#. I mean there is no way to go between them, alot of them are touching each other, and alot of my staves have 100s of these guys per stave. I have sanded down little pin knots on most of the woods I have worked on and seemed to be ok even though it violated the back riing it was only a small dot of violation, and most including osage didn't have 100s of em. Anybody else deal with this mulberry shannagins too?

[Pat B]

I've made mulberry bows with sapwood left on and it worked fine as long as the sapwood was sound. The mulberry I used had only a few, if any knots so I can't help with that. I'd say you would be OK with a ring or two left on the back for appearance sake but I would add rawhide for insurance. How heavy are you planning to go?  I think I'd find the best, cleanest piece to work with for a heavy bow.

[toomanyknots]

"I think I'd find the best, cleanest piece to work with for a heavy bow."

Hmmm, I guess I could go with the one with only about 50 pinknots...  . These are like the little beginnings of branches, little points that if sanded turn into a little ring violation. Some have about 7 in a horizontal row. I believe I am using red mulberry. I have access to another mulberry that I have no idea what it is, it's not red or white mulberry i believe. It has very smooth bark unlike red mulberry, not peeling though like paper mulberry. The bark is almost orange. Or maybe that is what white mulberry bark looks like it. I have a hedge of it in my backyard which I always thought was just a weird garden variety of mulberry until the other day I was out in the woods and broke a little branch off a tree to find orange heart wood on the inside. I was like "hey, I have a bunch of these in my yard" , but the ones in my yard are much smaller. I plan to go to 90# at 32" or maybe 100# at 32" at the most, with at least 80" nock to nock if I can get that much workable wood.

[aero86]

fruitless mulberry any good?

[Pat B]

       

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"I think I'd find the best, cleanest piece to work with for a heavy bow."       

 

[toomanyknots]

Will do pat.