I love the funky back of that bow! Vine maple is some pretty tough wood I wouldn't worry too much about it. Tiller it out and start flinging arrows!
Hey k-hat! When I saw the picture of your vine maple bow I had to call my wife over so she could see it! I built a v-maple bow about 15 years ago from a gnarly old piece of vine maple that my logger cousin cut for me. I didn't want to hurt his feelings so I split it and managed to get a stave that I thought was a "long shot", at best for making a bow. Well, the resulting bow looks remarkably like your vine maple post! Even my wife couldn't deny the resemblance. That bow also happens to be the sweetest shooting bow I ever built. After at least 5000 arrows it still shoots like it did when it was new! I have to add that it's also still as ugly as it ever was! I will post a picture or two when I figure out how to do it. Dale
Dale: I look forward to seeing your vm. Get a photobucket account if you don't already have one, easy peasy. BTW, mine is hackberry, not vinemaple, sorry if i led to some confusion there
At any rate, get that sucker posted! Unfortunately that bow has mostly sat around. I made it for the wife, and she shot it a few times, but the bug didn't bite
I will say that while it's not a screamer at 20#, it definitely WAY outperformed my son's 20# red oak bow . . . those light arrows really zipped! I didn't realize how much i'd love character bows when i started this with a red oak board!
Sorry to hijack there . . . hey coaster, you done yet?!? come on brotha get that baby shaped and tillered already