Out of curiosity I had a Juniper limb I scrounged out of my limb pile from spring trimming . After some eyeball trimming in bandsaw it ended up around 45"x 1-1/8" wide and 1"thick through grip. I made the grip about 4" long and just started knocking off things not looking like a bow . I wasnt concerned with final wieght or length but rather if it would make a working bow . After getting limbs to work fair and sort of even I noticed it had lots of wow to it being with limbs nowhere centered in handle ! I remembered reading where PatB used Olive oil and heat to straighten limbs and so what the heck ! With a little back and forth , limb to limb heating belly only (smelled like popcorn) and tweaking while heating and holding till pretty cool , I took a lot out of it . Looks like about 1/2-3/4" to each end came out and I didnt want to press my luck !
Its a monster T Rex bow , 18# @ 23"
But I now know a little about the wood !
Shot some AL 1916 out of it and they are way heavy for it ! Ill get some straight grain 1/4" dowel for some arrows when in town next
Ill post some pics in a bit when its dry .
Heres added pics. Little fuzzy on stick , lower limb is a bit stiffer but for the experiment I found out I may be able to make a bow from all this stuff growing around me. Just need a bigger limb !
