Forgewood: What would Bill Sweetland have done if he were a Bowyer?

[mikekeswick]

There was a guy who made a lignostone bow and it didn't perform any better than a typical bow. I don't really see the point of overly densifying wood. We already know that bows with wildly different sg numbers can come out the same in performance.
 If anything finding ways to reduce mass and preserve strength is a better scenario. Making a bow wood totally solid will make it like a solid glass ,horn or metal bow, none of which is going to light up the chrono.

Exactly right.

I got a board of lignum vitae (the tree of life) which is the densest wood in the world. I've made a quite a few different styles of bow from it , varying width/thickness ratios, different cross sections and everything else I could think of........ and have to conclude that even though it's denisity of 1.3 s.g. can't be touched it ain't all that as far as bows go.
I think the key to a fast bow is getting an ELASTIC piece of wood and tillering it perfectly............simple 
Density by itself is overated, bows need other properties from the wood.

[Carson (CMB)]

David, you are right that Valentine's day thing is way too complicated!   Actually, I hit a home run.  I booked a little ocean fishing trip, and she loved it.  The trip isn't for another couple weeks...hopefully we bring back plenty of fillets, bow-backing skins, and fish glue!

David, What about doing that with osage staves that have lots of early wood.  When I think of super prime osage, I think of next to no early wood.

Slackbunny, you make it sound so easy.  I doubt I will be setting it up anytime soon though.  I was thinking of a pressurized canister for impregnating arrow shafts with different drying liquids.  Kind of like Bob Lee's DuraWood risers.  That would not have to have near as much pressure, or maybe that should use negative pressure? Anyway, that might be a good build to get me thinking what a stave compressor build would go. 

Berny, I had never seen that bit about the compressed bow wood lams by Bill.  Makes sense that he would have applied his technique to bow woods. Also, makes sense that it was applied to laminations rather than staves.  I wonder what Chet thought of the compressed bow lams.  Would be cool to see one of those bows. 

Dauntless, that lignostone sounds interesting.  But I see now with some more recent replies here that it has been tried and the results not that exciting.   

PatM, Mike, I am thinking more along the lines of taking a softwood and making it dense, rather than taking a dense wood and making it extremely dense.  I would like to find a way to make use of locally abundant woods in making production bows.  Like ash-backed compressed cedar or fir.  Just a thought. 

[vinemaplebows]

Just my opinion, but I really think if you compressed the wood that much, it would be more likely to snap and loose it's elasticity. By the way isn't burnishing a primitive compression technique? Laminate bows with glass protection would be a seperate issue in my mind, there may be gains in that area. Interesting conversation none the less.

VMB

[Slackbunny]

Slackbunny, you make it sound so easy.  I doubt I will be setting it up anytime soon though.  I was thinking of a pressurized canister for impregnating arrow shafts with different drying liquids.  Kind of like Bob Lee's DuraWood risers.  That would not have to have near as much pressure, or maybe that should use negative pressure? Anyway, that might be a good build to get me thinking what a stave compressor build would go. 

Yeah it sounds easy. Its a simple concept but I can pretty much guarantee that the build would be a nightmare, unless maybe you're a machinist. The average joe does not have the expertise or equipment to whip out something like that. The removable, resealable cap on the pressure vessel would be quite troublesome I imagine.

[JW_Halverson]

Now if only we could incorporate liquid metabolic residue from large bovine North American ungulates into the process....   (Sorry mullet, I could not resist)

As I was reading this I kinda went the direction that soy did.  And where do we draw the line that seperates primitive archery from traditional archery and modern archery?  Yup, pretty interesting to talk about, even scheme over while drinking a yeast enhanced grain extracted fluid compound.  But is it something I would want to do?  Not so much. 

Thanks for the discussion, though.  It's one of the things that makes this forum so rich and entertaining.  That and the amazingly broad range of disciplines we all come from to be here. 

[Marks]

Compress it with water and then wait another 5 years for it to dry out and season or maybe take green wood and just squeeze the water out of it like a dish rag. WAY over my head. The way I see it you should compress it with tru oil and make in impervious finish.

I'm a prime example of the "keep silent and people may thing you are ignorant. Open your mouth and you'll leave no doubt."

[JMask]

some interesting work has been done in fabricating snowboards using vacuum presses, suck the air out and let the atmosphere do the work and presses made from inflated fire hose confined in a big press made from I beams

http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=485

or fabric

http://skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1820

just something to think about.

[Carson (CMB)]

Maybe I can get a "snowboardyer" to let me use his press.  I could see if the process has any merit before getting too vested in it.

[mikekeswick]

PatM, Mike, I am thinking more along the lines of taking a softwood and making it dense, rather than taking a dense wood and making it extremely dense.  I would like to find a way to make use of locally abundant woods in making production bows.  Like ash-backed compressed cedar or fir.  Just a thought.
[/quote]
The problem with these woods is the distinct difference between the early and late wood. The point I was making is that density is far from everything when it comes to making bows!

[Carson (CMB)]

Mike, I completely agree that density is not everything for bows.  And like you said in the earlier post, it is about elasticity. 

And Albert reported on page 2 here that there is increased modulus of elasticity from the compression process.  That is encouraging.

Fir's distinct difference in early/latewood might be tricky.  POC is less distinct and maybe that is one of the reasons Sweetland chose it for his compressed arrows.

[snag]

Years ago I had gotten pretty far into working out a purchase of Mr. Sweetland's machinery. My plan was to make Forgewoods and sell them commercially.  I thought it was interesting that POC is called Chamaecyparis Lawsoniana or Lawson Cypress, being as my last name is Lawson.... Talking with the Forest Service I found that to acquire enough "arrow grade" POC was just not doable today. So I backed away from it. 
When you are talking about this process the key component is POC and it's properties. This wood has enough of a naturally occurring substance that when brought up to 220 deg. under pressure solidifies into a glue. No other wood has enough of this substance to do this effectively as does POC.  This is why with all the experimented that Mr. Sweetland did he used POC.  I know the current owner of the machinery tried hemlock and other woods not as successfully.
So, I would think that if you were to try this with osage or some other wood you would have to inject it with a substance that would allow all the wood fibers to compress and then bind permanently.  The mass weight of a bow made from this would be extremely heavy too...? 

The picture is of Mr. Sweetland's platen press.

[mikekeswick]

 Very interesting Snag.

[JW_Halverson]

So the real reason nobody is making forgewood shafts is that there is not enough POC?  Ok, someone needs to plant a few thousand acres of POC, tend it carefully for a couple hundred years and go into production!

And folks wonder why conservationists want to set aside old growth forests?

[snag]

I was told by the FS person who handles the bids on timber that there is only 200 acres of standing POC that will make quality arrows. Now take into account that that isn't 200 acres of solid POC. That just means that on that 200 acres there is "some" POC.
This is on public lands. The Coquille Native American lands hold some POC but I was told they are definitely not cutting any of it. I spoke with the man who manages their cranberry business.