Birch as Bow Wood?

[Slackbunny]

I have done some reading about birch as a bow wood, and I would like to use it since there is a crapload of it around here (especially white). The consensus seems to be that yellow is better than white, and that saplings are better than full grown trees since they tend to be denser. But I have some questions:

1) What is really considered a sapling? How big can I go and still maintain a good density?
2) What style of bow does birch lend itself best to? Longbow, flatbow, recurved etc.
3) How vital is a backing on a birch bow? I tend to avoid backings where I can
4) Anything else I should know before I jump into this?

[65x55 swedis]

from my experiance with birch is that is a very tough wood and that you probly keep the limbs wide and maybe long to. i tried birch before.(white) and i worked on it for a week and got it down to a 1/2 in and it was not bending well. it broke it on the tillering tree when i was seeing where it was still stiff

[PEARL DRUMS]

I have no birch experinece, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night. Lets pretend your draw is 28". I would build a 68" ttt bow, 66" ntn. No less than 2.25" wide at the fades and straight tapering 16" from the tips, they are 1/2" square. Backing birch sounds like a good idea to me. I would use rawhide because its easy, cheap, and very effective and doesnt take 2 months to dry. Make sure the wood is DRY before you do any bending at all. Birch gets harder as it dries down. Weigh it to be sure it stops losing weight. I would look for a 12-14" tree, a flat back seems only right to me.

[Slackbunny]

Thanks, I'll take all that into consideration.

[half eye]

Slackbunny,
      I've built 9 white (paperbirch) bows so far.....all were from plainsawn boards that were hand cut....all are backed. 3 backed with hard maple, 3 backed with bamboo, and 3 backed with hickory. They are all short, bend through the handle, eastern woodland style bows drawing at 50# plus or minus a little bit.
      all these bows shoot real quick and hard. I live about on the 45th parrallel and the trees around here are all pretty dense, and my birch is in a bout the same weight range as hard maple. It is VERY strong in compression (one of the bamboo backed bows is 50" draws 51# at 26" and has fired many hundreds of arrows with no sign of compression fractures at all.
      You may want to consider trapping the belly on a self birch bow. I haven't built one of those but the ones I did make had very strong compression traits.
     hope that helps a little
rich

[gstoneberg]

I'm hoping Rich (half eye) will respond.  I have one of his little birch short bows.  I think he likes to back birch with a tension strong wood.  The bow I have is a hard maple backed birch if I remember right.  I also have a birch wood core to build a bow from but haven't gotten to it yet.  So many possibilities, so little free time.

Ah, I see Rich has chimed in.  Good.

George

[Slackbunny]

That is very encouraging to know half eye. Thanks for the advice.

[mspink]

slackbunny, I have made another birch that i didnt back. Its around 59" and I got 50 lbs @ 27" with that one. Its been used for one season and shot many hundreds of times and still hold a bit of reflex. The trick for the low set was I think to be the trapezoid cross section because it was a smaller diameter tree. Its a great bow!

[Jude]

I'm kind of curious as to where you're at.  I ask this because the quality of white birch varies by locale.  Living in central Alaska, I had read about many folks making good bows out of birch, so I knocked down a 6" diameter tree and split out a bunch of staves.  The two bows I made broke out in compression fractures up and down both limbs as soon as I passed 22" on the tillering tree.  I later learned that the Athabaskan natives of the area made straight bows with string blocks to achieve brace height, so the bows were under no tension at brace.  I wondered how, if birch was such a poor wood, why others seemed to have great luck with it.  Upon further research, I discovered that the subspecies in my area was exceptionally weak.  The subspecies found in the northeastern US appears to be a crossbreed with yellow birch, and is stronger than average and much longer lived than the rest of the species.  I've seen a few in Vermont that were nearly 2' in diameter, putting them well over 100yo.  Aside from the extreme northwest, white birch across North America is supposed to be good bow wood.  The usual recommendation I've seen is to keep the limbs wide, like most of the other white woods.  Hope this helps,

Julian

[dwardo]

I did make one a long while ago and whilst it did chrystal after a while it was only down to my bad tiller. Seems that a salping forearm wide ish seemed to be a winner, also, almost knot free.
I heat treated twice as far as i remeber and was a very sweet shooter.

[ken75]

i finished one today that is birch backed walnut . birch backing strip is fully 1/4 sawn and it did amazing in tension for the length of this one. the birch i used is Rich's michagin hard stuff.

[Slackbunny]

I live in New Brunswick, Canada, so based on what you said about Northeastern Birch, I should be okay. Plus I found a good stand of yellow birch only about a 4 minute walk from my in-laws backyard, most of which is the right size and fairly straight. I've got one stave all roughed out and drying which will be made into a shortbow, and another log that I still have to strip the bark off of, and rough out that I might be able to get two more bows out of. So I've got my work cut out for the next little while.

I knew there was a lot of birch in my area, but now that I've been actively looking for it, I've discovered that it is literally everywhere around here. It must account for a third of the hardwoods in this area.

[E.H.]

just saw this old thread and got interested in something... there are often some trees and saplings that are very curved like a circle where i am due to winter and the big glaze of 1998. i'm thinking the circle like curve of those would be interesting for bow making but i'm not sure... in this thread i saw that the density of the wood varied from place to place, i'm from southern quebec (very close to vermont since the missisquoi river passes relatively closeby). i'm also making warclubs so i thought using a bit more of the wood would be interesting

[willie]

that's also common for birch in heavy snow country. most of the ones here are 2-3 inches in diameter before they succumb. I think the moose browse the stunted trees too hard.

any pics of the warclubs? or the trees where you are? most folks would be interested as they most likely don't know what we are talking about.

[E.H.]

for the trees i can't take pictures for now since i live in the city, i'll try to find some when i go into the woods for root burls for the warclubs i have a few pictures, the ball warclub is from a yellow birch that was growing on the edge of my uncle's land. the gunstock is one of the few i've made so far with a hickory board. will make more soon. i included a closeup of the root burl ball since i think it's just gorgeous :3 .