Wild Cherry question

[TNArcher1969]

I have a Wild Cherry stave that I am wanting to make a bow out of. The question I have, do I take all the sap wood off and start with heart wood?

[BowEd]

I have a few common choke cherry staves[might not be the exact same as your wild cherry though]that I will leave the sapwood on it.I'm letting them dry yet.That will be the bows back.

[dwardo]

What kind of cherry is it? Looks like our Prunus Avium (Uk) ?

[nativenoobowyer86]

looks like an Ebay cherry stave

[TNArcher1969]

Yes I got it off eBay. Not sure what kind of cherry it is. All I know is that it is wild cherry.

[nativenoobowyer86]

I saw that stave make its rounds on ebay and i would back it, to me it looked like the guy had violated the outer wood fibres.  So you can back it with rawhide or canvas,  trying to follow a ring on cherry can be difficult becuase there is no crumbly early wood to feel for inbetween yearly rings.  if you back the stave, its not a big deal to rip it down a little so there is some heartwood included in the limbs.

These are my thoughts when i saw the stave up for auction

[BowEd]

Yea I meant or forgot to say that cherry should at least have a rawhide backing on it.Not meaning your back is as is good to go.

[TNArcher1969]

Thanks for the info. I am new to the bow building world. Finished my first Osage a couple weeks ago. Have a lot of great people help me. Thanks to Pappy, Jimmy , Will and Jon. All helped.
Showed the stave to Jimmy last night and he said was a nice stave,  but wasn't sure about the sap wood. Told me to throw the question up on PA.

[dmenzies1950]

I've built a few wild cherry bows. I always back mine with rawhide, but other backings would probably work too.   Dale

[TNArcher1969]

Gonna start working on it tomorrow. Will post some pics as it develops into a bow.

[chamookman]

My very first selfbow was a Cherry bark backed Black Cherry. Cherry bark is a pretty backing, specially on Osage!

[dragonman]

Like Dwardo says, that does looks like our Uk wild cherry, called bird cherry sometines, I have made good bows from it before backed with ash. In this case the heart wood is stronger than the sap wood, so if you back it I'd remove the sap wood......just a possibility? Good luck with it