beginner advice

[sapling bowyer]

Greetings from Turkey! I'm new to this forum and this is my first post. As I am a beginner to this "Primitive Bowmaking" I want some advice and I have some questions. First of all, all the bows I want to make are self bows. I can possibly back them with snake skin in the future. Secondly I want to make stave bows, not board bows and I don't like cutting trunks just to make a bow so I would like to make sapling bows ( max. 3 inch diameter). I would like some recommendations about what type of wood I should use. I have used hazel with success before and I am working on a Yew short bow. I also have very nice straight pieces of black locust but they are mostly sapwood. I read before that we have to use the heartwood only so could I make one out of sapwood? If you have any more advice please comment.

[Pat B]

Not knowing what wood you have available to you in Turkey it's hard to say. The woods you mentioned are all good bow woods, even the sapwood of locust.

[sapling bowyer]

there's plenty of olive, hazel and oak(I don't know which kind) but the oaks aren't decent staves. I may also get access to ash but the best staves around are black locust but I'm not sure if the sapwood will perform well

[dirthas]

Black locust is known as a great bow wood, and the sapwood seems to be a matter of debate:

http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php/topic,32411.0.html

http://paleoplanet69529.yuku.com/topic/45985/Black-Locust-sap-wood

I'm also a beginner so I'll give you my take on it. Just go for it! Make a BL sapwood/heartwood bow and see how it turns out. I know that for me, I can't start worrying about "performance" because just getting a bow to shoot is still a struggle. It only takes decent wood to make a bow, but it takes great tiller and a lot of patience.

[Pat B]

Give the BL sapwood a try. Make it longer and wider. You won't know til you try. 

[sapling bowyer]

Thanks for the advice and can I go with 62 inches for the length?

[Pappy]

What is you draw length ? 62 should be fine for normal draw around 26/27 inches.
 Pappy

[sapling bowyer]

İ have a relatively short draw length around 24 inches so i think it is ok

[stuckinthemud]

Olive is supposed to be an amazing bow-wood - Google olive longbow to avoid all the bow-tie results that come up from olive self-bow

[George Tsoukalas]

My first shooter was made from a BL sapling. No ring chasing.
I just finished a BL bow that has 1 layer of sapwood because it wasn't wide enough for all heartwood.
You may be reading about it in good time in Primitive Archer.

BL is best with a heartwood back.
If I do not have enough heartwood I leave as much sapwood as I think I would need.
Remember that sapwood changes to heartwood as the tree ages.

I posted a shot of the bow on here a month ago.
Here's a similar photo as well as some info.

http://traditionalarchery101.com/

Jawge

[sapling bowyer]

Thank you very much for you help! I will start on a locust sapling bow

[sapling bowyer]

Also people have great recommendations for olive and I have access to get staves so my next project will be an olive self bow

[scp]

For a sapling bow, I would consider making a backward bow. I'm too lazy to work carefully with birch saplings with too many knots. So, I just rip them in half and make two backward bows out of each of them, so long as they are more than 2 inches in diameter. Good luck.

[TimPotter]

Dirthas, thank you for those links. The 1st one I found very interesting.

I love it when people think out of the box and just do it. My 1st ever bows were of black locust and sweetgum. This was before I ever heard of "The Bowyers Bibles" or 'Primitive Archer" I just gave it a try. I made a black locust flat bow from a small enough sapling that it had 1" width of heart wood down the center of 2 and a 1/4" wide limbs. It was probably 50/50 sapwood heartwood ratio with a bend in the handle design. Kinda Holmegaard like but it was before I heard of that historic bow. I just made it,  and it worked and it shot well enough for a newbie. and I liked the way it looked. Lately I've been contemplating a BL warbow with sapwood and heartwood showing. It's still in the "hmmmmmm what if?" stage but I'm getting to the point of actually picking up the saw soon. Maybe today.