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I have a question for the people that aren't crazy about osage. Does it grow locally around you? "
Here is a photo of an old growth osage from my main osage spot:
It doesn't look like it in this picture, but it is actually a huge tree. The woods around there are like 50 percent osage. If I wanted, every bow I make could be osage. Although, I never said I wasn't crazy about osage at all. I'm crazy about basically all bow wood. Anyway, I thought I would share some of my own personal thoughts. So, to tastelessly rehash what Mike Keswick, Ryoon, I think George too, and probably a bunch of other people on here might have said in so many words, I will get all crazy and quote a paragraph from the book of five rings:
"In the construction of houses, choice of woods is made. Straight un-knotted timber of good appearance is used for the revealed pillars, straight timber with small defects is used for the inner pillars. Timbers of the finest appearance, even if a little weak, is used for the thresholds, lintels, doors, and sliding doors, and so on. Good strong timber, though it be gnarled and knotted, can always be used discreetly in construction. Timber which is weak or knotted throughout should be used as scaffolding, and later for firewood." So in other words, if the bow wood is too dense to allow for a brilliant cast, than make the bow shorter. If the Bow wood is very light, than take advantage of it to increase cast. If the wood is not as compression strong, make it wider. If the wood is very compression strong, than take advantage of it by heavily reflexing it, and creating higher early draw weight. I agree with whoever said in this thread that
design trumps species. I believe that human innovation has the potential to overcome subtle differences in traits and qualities of bow woods in general, and overcome short falls that this or that species may have, to result in high performance bows of most any of the typical known bow woods. And I don't think that there is any
"best" bow wood, (never tried yew, so I might be wrong), but I think even osage has negatives, that you have to work around. Like I said in the other thread, density just don't equal fps. In fact, I get better shooting bows alot of the time out of woods that have been condemned as lesser bow woods. My silver maple longbows shoot 1000 times better than my osage longbows. Mostly because of it's dramaticly light weight when compared to osage. You say that osage takes less mass to make a bow than other woods. But for what you trade in less mass, you gain back in more weight, specifically detrimental outer limb weight, than the other guy would have. So what fps you might gain from a narrower bow, you might just end up losing again due to excessive density? Blackhawk and Pearl, neither of you can truthfully say that osage is the end all of all bow wood when because of it's density, it will make a handshocky sluggish longbow when compared to lighter woods, and even more so in a warbow (in selfbow form in both cases of course). Are longbows not legitimate bows in your guy's worlds? But you know what would make a nice shooting longbow? Basically any fairly light, so - so bow wood. Woods like silver maple will make a nice shooting longbow...
silver maple, which would make a horrible flatbow chrysaled to heck and back in the same design of an osage flatbow. Osage does have it's negative qualities like all things in life. It is the responsibility of the bowyer to effectively make use of his bow wood, it is not the responsibility of the wood.
