Hi,
I live in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The black palm I get is actually from the frons that they trim. It makes a good backing but not a very fast bow on its own. The only other guy I know that makes bows in thailand makes recurves and longbows from the black palm but they shoot really slow. I am trying to combine it as a backing with something like burmese redwood. I wouldn't think that rosewood would make a good bow. Too heavy and many of these tropical hardwoods are too brittle with out a backing like bamboo or the palm. I've tried a number of woods and had problems with frets. Bamboo backed teak didn't work, bamboo backed burmese redwood had frets after several hundred arrows. I should give it another go as I was still new to bowmaking when I tried several and my tillering wasn't the best then.
Some more experienced bowyers encouraged me to look to the fruit woods over hardwoods. Tamarind, Mango and guava are a few better ones.
There really isn't much archery tradition here in SE Asia. Some of the groups like the Hmong and Laha used crossbows with bamboo darts. They relied on poison to take down game.
