Black locust/Osage Orange comparson via wood-database.com

[JW_Halverson]

Osage - makes a great bow however it is very easy to make the bow overbuilt. Osage bows should be very narrow and often aren't.
Black Locust  - makes great bows. The fact that chyrsal's show up when you mess something up is, in my book, just great 


If I had to use one one wood for ever more then it would likely be locust. It's premium bow wood.

If Mike was looking over the osage bows I made 5 years ago, I would take his comment as an insult to my design choices.  Fact is, he's dead right.  I was making some osage bows 1.5-1.75 inches wide!  AAARGH!  No wonder I was having trouble hitting draw weights and struggling with tillering.  By the time I was close to draw weight an errant scrape or two would have great effect on the tiller.  I thought I was building with a margin of error, playing it safe. 

Now that I start at an inch and a quarter and often fine tune it down an eight from there, I find tillering much easier.  Oh wonder of wonders, I build much better bows these days, too.

[Joec123able]

Can't belive every thing you read on the Internet we all know Osage is king no matter what 

[huisme]

Can't belive every thing you read on the Internet we all know Osage is king no matter what 

I read that on the internet 

I'm not saying gaining personal experience isn't more reliable than reading numbers in the long run, but I am saying maybe thorough testing with recorded methods could provide reason to question a consensus.

I mean, has anyone mad nearly as many BL bows as they have Osage? Done equal testing of the two?

I know I can't treat the two woods to equal testing over equal time, but my experience with BL as my main bow wood lends to my idea that maybe Osage is more 'one of several governors' than a 'king'.

[twisted hickory]

The wood database gets information straight from FPL tests which were very thorough. But take these at face value, not all the info is there (ie: tensile strength, etc.) Also the only numbers we have for osage are predicted based on the green numbers.....

If you really want to get confused compare Black Locust with Pignut Hickory...

Pignut hickory
Average Dried Weight: 52 lbs/ft3 (835 kg/m3)
Specific Gravity (Basic, 12% MC): .66, .83
Janka Hardness: 2,140 lbf (9,520 N)
Modulus of Rupture: 20,100 lbf/in2 (138.6 MPa)
Elastic Modulus: 2,260,000 lbf/in2 (15.59 GPa)
Crushing Strength: 9,190 lbf/in2 (63.4 MPa)

Black Locust
Average Dried Weight: 51 lbs/ft3 (825 kg/m3)
Specific Gravity (Basic, 12% MC): .66, .82
Janka Hardness: 1,700 lbf (7,560 N)
Modulus of Rupture: 19,400 lbf/in2 (133.8 MPa)
Elastic Modulus: 2,050,000 lbf/in2 (14.14 GPa)
Crushing Strength: 10,200 lbf/in2 (70.3 MPa)

The hickory still has extremely high crushing strength but it's belly is sometimes overpowered.... maybe locust is the same? But hey, I don't have enough experience.

David,
Intresting you have noticed this. I have only worked with shagbark hickory and black locust. As long as the hickory is dry it seems to perform just as well. When it's humid though it loses a bit of cast compared to BL. Hickory is hard that's for sure. I have had some tillering issues with both as once the cells are crushed or what ever on the belly it's going to take set. I did have a piece of hickory get some compression fractures due to asking too much out of the stave I think it was too high a draw weight and not long/wide enough limbs.

[StickMan47]

Oh Lord, the can of worms is busted wide open now, he said Osage ain't king!!! Lol. Gettin my popcorn.

[DavidV]

Twisted Hickory- Shagbark is the closest to Pignut with being just slightly lighter.

Does anyone trap black locust? I've heard it takes heat treating well, but nobody talks about the tensile strength.

[rossfactor]

There's a reason you chance a ring on BL and Osage.  I think the wood database tests use boards, not ring chased staves.  I believe this will effect many of the important properties of bow woods.

But since the results from evaluating bow woods (based on characteristics from the Wood Data base) generally line up with which bow woods are preferred  (e.g. Yew and Osage)  I think this information isn't necessarily useless to the bowyer.

Gabe

[Thesquirrelslinger]

I have never tried osage. I think it is a pretty wood. very good wood too.
But bL is something else.
If I had to only use 1 wood forever it would be locust.
It is challenging, yet it can make amazing bows.
it is easy, yet it can easily snap and break your skull.
it is even pretty and takes finish well.

[PEARL DRUMS]

Squirrel you cant rightfully pick your forever wood before you at least run through the top 8-10 woods. 

[RyanR]

This is a little off the subject of Osage vs black locust but I found it interesting what JW Halverson said about tillering a wide limb bow versus a narrower bow. I have not made many bows but is really that much harder to tiller a wider bow? This will ruin my theory of keeping draw weight up with a wider bow. I am glad I read that post.

[twisted hickory]

This is a little off the subject of Osage vs black locust but I found it interesting what JW Halverson said about tillering a wide limb bow versus a narrower bow. I have not made many bows but is really that much harder to tiller a wider bow? This will ruin my theory of keeping draw weight up with a wider bow. I am glad I read that post.

Yea I wish I had read that before I tried that on a hickory bow. 2.5 inch wide limbs and 48 lbs make for parchment thick limbs that can be tillered with 0000 steel wool It made a bow but not sure how long it will last.
Greg

[Jim Davis]

As DavidV said,

The wood database gets information straight from FPL tests which were very thorough. But take these at face value, not all the info is there (ie: tensile strength, etc.) Also the only numbers we have for osage are predicted based on the green numbers.....

Actually, I think the numbers for Osage are the results of testing the green wood.

That is the fly in the ointment for every table that has ever been made of American woods. For some lame-brained reason, the Forest Products Laboratory did not include the test results for DRY Osage. It was a stupid and negligent omission. I have tried to  hold their feet to the fire several times beginning a decade or more ago, but they have fireproof sneakers. They don't care that the data is incomplete.

So, don't try to use the numbers from any table of mechanical properties of American woods to gauge the strength of Osage. Every one of those tables is derived from  the FPL tests and therefore has only numbers for green osage.

The tables are good for all the other woods, but not Osage.

[mikekeswick]

As Blackhawk says the more bows you make the more redundant the numbers become.
The tests aren't done with chased ring staves so the numbers are of very limited use....for all the woods. Think of them as a very rough ballpark figure to give you some idea of what the wood is like.
Wider/thinner = less strain than a narrow/thicker bow. However a 100th inch thick shaving is a smaller fraction of total limb thickness on the narrower bow than it would be from the wider bow eg. that shaving has more of an effect because it's a higher percentage of total limb thickness.
I've made plenty of bow from both woods and personally I prefer the b.l. Maybe i've just had great locust? I could post a link to the fastest bow i've ever made but I can't be bothered to find it! Anyway to make fast bows from locust you must take into account its strength in tension. If the stave isn't crowned then yes trap the back. I then tiller to around 20 or so inches and heat treat before I get any set. From there on out tiller by looking for set.

[BowEd]

That's what I did with my BL is tiller it to 20".Get a very good estimate of my full draw poundage with minimal set and heat treated it.Taking into account that it might gain draw weight from the heat treatment.Starting wide enough so that I can do a lot of side tillering to reduce my poundage and keep my good tiller without belly reduction that would hinder my heat treatment.It already has a nice enough crown.
Moisture content is so very important to begin with,with making a bow.
Fellas it's like they say....You gotta pull some shavings and do some bending to really get a feel of a paticular wood.

[JG]

May be I can help a bit to get more questions.

I took some Wood I know a bit Maple a very common used Wood in laminates.

Common Name(s): Norway Maple

Scientific Name: Acer platanoides

Distribution: Europe and western Asia; also planted in North America

Average Dried Weight: 40 lbs/ft3 (645 kg/m3)

Specific Gravity (Basic, 12% MC): .50, .65

Janka Hardness: 1,010 lbf (4,510 N)*

*Estimated hardness based on specific gravity

Modulus of Rupture: 16,680 lbf/in2 (115.0 MPa)

Elastic Modulus: 1,538,000 lbf/in2 (10.60 GPa)

Crushing Strength: 8,560 lbf/in2 (59.0 MPa)

So it is similar to osage a little weaker, but I think someone should also consider

Bending Strength: 19,870 lbf/in2 (137 MPa)  Norway Maple

Bending Strength: 18,854 lbf/in2 (130 MPa)  Black Locust

Bending Strength: 16,679 lbf/in2 (115 MPa) Hickory

It will not give you all about the Wood, but it shows how much wood likes to bend.
I could not find Bending Strength for osage but i would say it is considerably high.

Dont get lost in NUMB3R5!

J