Sugar Maple American Flatbow

[hedgeapple]

BriarJumper, I guessing from DLH's post that you're in KY.  If so there is no minimum draw weight bows in KY.  I have the 2013 regs in front of my as I time this.

[briarjumper12]

DLH, Hedgeapple,
I am in Whitley County. Glad to hear there are no weight restrictions.  I took the bow to the gentelman who gifted me the stave and let him shoot it.  He said he would have no reservations whatsoever about hunting deer with it.  I would love to shoot it through a chrono with arrows I made for it. I made six of them and took great pains to match them in spine and weight while I was putting the taper on them. 

[lostarrow]

Nice job! The only thing I would say is, you have plenty of meat in the handle that you could whittle down and round a little more  to fit in your hand.  It makes a big difference in how you shoot and is more comfortable to carry through the bush all day. Try grabbing a  fg longbow at the  archery store to get an idea of size. Most of the manufactured recurves have big clunky handles , so I would look to the longbows for direction.

[BowEd]

Very nice bow briar.Excellent tiller & example of a flat bow.I like that.I too have a lot of hickory around me and is a very good bow wood for me.I've only worked one sugar maple but really liked its' qualities too of being lighter in the hand etc.I would'nt mind getting more of it myself.Being diffuse porous it is known to take glues well also which it has proven to me to be excellent in that catagory too.

[burn em up chuck]

    very very cool

              chuck

[briarjumper12]

Nice job! The only thing I would say is, you have plenty of meat in the handle that you could whittle down and round a little more  to fit in your hand.  It makes a big difference in how you shoot and is more comfortable to carry through the bush all day. Try grabbing a  fg longbow at the  archery store to get an idea of size. Most of the manufactured recurves have big clunky handles , so I would look to the longbows for direction.

Danny (where the stave come from) and I talked about that too.  Even rounding the edges of the fades in more too like you guys do on the osage bows.  I'm workin on a sleeve takedown right now but when I do the next one piece I am going to incorporate those ideas into it.  I kinda like the flat on the belly of the grip due to the way I grip, using a low wrist but I would like to round it more without making it too narrow on the belly side. I've made several with wide round grips and they worked pretty good. With my last couple of bows I've tried to narrow them down but as a result was reluctant to round the too much. So maybe on the next one I'll find the happy medium.  Thanks for the comments and suggestions, it is much appreciated.  I just keep learning new things from this site and that is a good thing.

[briarjumper12]

Very nice bow briar.Excellent tiller & example of a flat bow.I like that.I too have a lot of hickory around me and is a very good bow wood for me.I've only worked one sugar maple but really liked its' qualities too of being lighter in the hand etc.I would'nt mind getting more of it myself.Being diffuse porous it is known to take glues well also which it has proven to me to be excellent in that catagory too.

It being diffuse porous is what I like most about it.  How it works, takes stain ect.  I definately want more of it and got a line a good haul come Oct.  My friend Danny says it is not plaqued by the moisture problems like hickory is.  I know I've had trouble with my Hick bows soaking up moisture even after being sealed up good.  I even began stored them in the hotbox last year which has helped with that problem but I still consider it a deficiency for hickory in a humid area such as SE Kentucky.

[BowEd]

If you get more than enough let me know.Maybe we can do a swap of some kind.Yes moisture is a concern with hickory.I keep my place around 45 to 55 % humidity year round.The humidity they were tillerd at so it does'nt affect my bows much.

[briarjumper12]

If you get more than enough let me know.Maybe we can do a swap of some kind.Yes moisture is a concern with hickory.I keep my place around 45 to 55 % humidity year round.The humidity they were tillerd at so it does'nt affect my bows much.

I keep mine in the hotbox while building the bow, usually around 90 f, 25% RH.  If I just quit using the hotbox how would that effect things I wonder?  My shop is somewhat cooled by a window unit that blows on my work station and only heated when I build a fire while working for a whole day.  Takes too long to build a fire and warm up the place for anything less than a few hours of work.  so the RH and temp jumps all over in my shop.  If I kept the stave in the house where things are more regulated would that work? 
What I was running into was that I would get a bow done and sealed up good, with very little if any set. But, then after a few months of shooting and not being in the hotbox, progressive (slow) set would start occurring.  I have a bow now, that I finished last year and shot the heck out of it, that I've kept stored in the hot box all this time.  I haven't seen the progressive set occur in this bow as with the others that weren't stored in the hotbox.  Makes me think that my bows were picking moisture after finishing and causeing them to take set little be little over time.  I was taking my hickory down to around 6% MC as best I could figure with a wood MC chart. I think that over the course of time they were jumping back up to who knows what MC %.   Sound plausible?

If I get a bunch of Sugar Maple this coming Oct I'll be glad for a swap.  There are some loggers going to be cutting a stand of sugar maple then and I've been told that I can have anything they can't sell.  Will probably uppers and limbs but it's about 30 or 40 acres so I should be able to find a few staves in it.  Just send me a pm sometime in Oct. and let you know if I've found anything.  They are beginning the first week in Oct and I intend on trying to visit the site at least once a week while they are working there.

[BowEd]

Yes if it's possible that you can bring your bows inside to a more stable controlled environment that would help a lot.It does here.Even though it is sealed though over a period of weeks humidity can creep in eventually.I've tried a lot of different sealants.Linseed oil,tru oil,tung oil,bees wax,parafin,polyurethanes,magna lac[lacquer],now I'm using some products from a company called Cabot.They are pretty well known.I use a compatible sanding sealer twice,then 3 coats of satin spar varnish.It is softer than magna lac and takes approximately 2 days to dry.Magna lac dries in an hour and you can be shooting your bow.All work good.I'm partial to spar varnish right now.
Sounds good to me about the swap sometime of staves.We'll find out how far apart we are from PM messages.

[Hrothgar]

Very nice profile, a real sweet looking bow!