Lowes Western Red Cedar fence rail

[JW_Halverson]

Back it with some Dog Bone rawhide, that stuff is thick enough to hold it together.

Grady

I have antelope rawhide, too.  It's about as thin as the paper you print business cards on.  You can't break it.  In fact a moron in my shop told me once it was worthless and I should be using buffalo rawhide.  I handed him a quarter inch wide strip about a foot long and told him to break it.  He wrapped it around his hands and gave it a pop.  Both pinkies were nearly severed.  One was cut to the bone and the other had the rawhide lined up with the first joint and the rawhide was stuck inside the joint.  Had to drive the idiot to the emergency room. 

Seems there are three types of folks.  There are the rare few that can learn by reading.  A few others learn from what they are told.  The third and largest group just has to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

[Ifrit617]

Back it with some Dog Bone rawhide, that stuff is thick enough to hold it together.

Grady

Seems there are three types of folks.  There are the rare few that can learn by reading.  A few others learn from what they are told.  The third and largest group just has to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

By far one of my favorite quotes. 

Jon

[UserNameTaken]

JW, my plan included backing the bow with something that is strong in tension--probably flax, because it's supposed to be even lighter than wood. Then, you would hopefully get a serviceable amount of compression in the belly (because of the trapping), and you might also get the benefit of the light weight and extremely tension-strong flax.

If the combination happened to work, I would think that you might end up with a really light and fast bow because of all the mass reduction. The flax would also probably keep the bow from smacking you in the forehead or gouging out your eyeballs when it blew up.

[JW_Halverson]

Back it with some Dog Bone rawhide, that stuff is thick enough to hold it together.

Grady

Seems there are three types of folks.  There are the rare few that can learn by reading.  A few others learn from what they are told.  The third and largest group just has to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

By far one of my favorite quotes. 

Jon

Ifrit, you are known to be a veteran fence whizzer!

[sleek]

JW, if you make this work, you are going to make my cut up a perfectly good board for rub rails on my boat and make it into a bow, or two.

[randman]

Sleek, that's the thing about Western Red Cedar - a cedar board's definitely not going to work. Think small diameter trunk or branch with a thin layer of sapwood and more heartwood - with tight ring growth like a yew or juniper. If you have access to the old growth trees like we have in the Pac NW, you'll find lots of lower branches that are 2"-2 1/2" dia. that are 60 - 80 years old (growth rings). Very dense for cedar. I have a couple waiting in the wings for me to get busy on and I'm very confident they will perform as good as any similar juniper or incense cedar (with a couple layers of sinew of course). Common wisdom says WRC won't make a bow but my moneys also on JW from the rail he described. Like Lofflerchuck says with his sinewed incense cedar California style bows - oval (lemon shaped) cross section and good layers of sinew. I have to think the natives would have used it also and even though there doesn't SEEM to be any museum specimens of it, IMHO it would be very hard to differentiate an old aged WRC bow from an old aged juniper bow (especially by museum curators who insist on bracing bows backwards - and we all know there's plenty of them) The color and look and sapwood to heartwood ratio is very similar.

[Josh B]

I got faith in ya JW! But, if for some reason the bow gremlins get in your shop and sabotage your efforts, I probably have an ERC limb that would do quite nicely!  I'm pretty sure it could be had pretty reasonably too.   Josh

[Sidewinder]

JW you are by far my favorite comedian. I am interested to see if you can get er done. If not then nothing lost and plenty gained. I need to write down some of your JWisms they are priceless.   Danny

[Newindian]

I think I came across a web site where a guy had made several bows from incense ceder he stressed the importance of keeping in moisture, basically he made a nearly green wood bow and did his best to keep them that way

[k-hat]

Back it with some Dog Bone rawhide, that stuff is thick enough to hold it together.

Grady

I have antelope rawhide, too.  It's about as thin as the paper you print business cards on.  You can't break it.  In fact a moron in my shop told me once it was worthless and I should be using buffalo rawhide.  I handed him a quarter inch wide strip about a foot long and told him to break it.  He wrapped it around his hands and gave it a pop.  Both pinkies were nearly severed.  One was cut to the bone and the other had the rawhide lined up with the first joint and the rawhide was stuck inside the joint.  Had to drive the idiot to the emergency room. 

Seems there are three types of folks.  There are the rare few that can learn by reading.  A few others learn from what they are told.  The third and largest group just has to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

wow, i don't even know what to say...

Except i do believe you can make a shooter out of it JW, still wanna see some pics!