Aus suspect bow wood stave haul

[NoShoesNoBlues]

Hello first post! been watching this forum on and off.
In frustration of lack of solid info about bow woods in Australia i went out and just cut from my property what seemed plausible options, which were Australian Blackwood (Acacia Melanoxylon) and another that i think is Native Musk (Olearia argophylla) its very heavy and dense and seems to bend well. Got my eyes on a few other oddballs growing around here like lancewood (Nematolepis squamea) , and horizontal scrub (Anodopetalum biglandulosum) and I also found a blackheart sassafras tree which is not related to normal sassafras, eucalytpus seems like a waste of time from what ive read and what ive got available.
Two thin tallish understorey sized trees haul so far.

About 20 staves all up. most of the trunk lengths were quartered, staves around 6ft, tightish grain due to tall thin shape. the Acacia grew with twist so ill have to deal with it, some of the bad pieces have about 90 degrees of twist from end to end

Roughed out a bow from the acacia, all sapwood, the heartwood seems to snap more easy than the sapwood too. tied it down to dry and try and untwist it. Theres a kno=t with crumbly bad wood inside, on the edge of the limb do i drill it out? if so do i just sand it and leave a hole or do i fill it up with something?

What are the best bow shapes and dimensions for uncertain woods? my staves are drying inside neatly stacked and spaced, should they be tied down or even roughed out? the roughed out bow is prob around 70 inches around 3inch at the widest point, was gonna try for short, stiff, thin tips
thanks!

[Pat B]

Be sure the ends and backs are sealed well.
The best design for woods that you are uncertain about is an overbuilt design, long with the same width most of the length except for the last 8" to 10" at each tip . If that works well, narrow and/or shorten a bit and try again.
 I'd like to see a good pic of the knot you discussed.

[osage outlaw]

Nice haul!  Keep us updated with bow wood experiments.  Maybe make a few designs from each tree and see how they perform. 

[NoShoesNoBlues]

Ends are sealed with 2 coats wood glue, havent done the backs though so ill do that quickly.
Heres the knot on the belly,  the center of the knot is where my limb would've been but i left alot of wood around it. i hope its not to big an issue.

and back

thanks

[Hamish]

 Nice haul.

Blackwood likes wide flat limbs. It can chrysal. I made one of my first successful bows from blackwood. It was just under 2" wide, Meare Heath design, 45 lbs at 28", around 68" long. If you haven't got many bows under your belt yet, 2 &1/4" wide might be better.


Horizontal and musk sound very promising. Horizontal looks very similar to American Vine Maple, so if its anything like that it would be a good bow wood.


Any wood called lancewood is usually a good candidate to try. Strong, straight, and tough. Mainland lancewood(acacia shirleyii) is unrelated but it makes a lovely bow.


Tassie myrtle makes a great bow too, resists chrysalling. I have built round bellied bows, though not quite as arched as an English longbow. It might even handle a high arch, though I 've never tried because its pretty hard, and expensive to get these days on the mainland. I have only used the darker stuff, rose myrtle.


Wirewood might be another good prospect it is supposed to be very strong in tension.

Possibly leatherwood too.

[Rākau]

Nica haul of staves mate! That's good to hear about Blackwood, we get a bit of it over the ditch here in NZ every now and then.
If a wood chrysals does that indicate that it is stronger in tension than compression? maybe good as a backing?

[Ryan Jacob]

I also heard you guys have some black palm there? It may be a bit tough to work but my experience with it (any fully grown three that can spring back after it’s leaves touch the ground gets the go ahead from me)  makes it seem close to unbreakable

[NoShoesNoBlues]

Thanks for the replies, good to hear blackwood is good, heard that it can make a bow but might chrysal, was there any heartwood in the limbs of your bow?. Also cut down what i suspect is lancewood, and got a few staves. the search is on for the horizontal scrub now and will keep an eye out for the myrtle too, next victim is probably the blackheart sassafras tree i found as its wood properties online suggest it is dense and may be usable who knows. time to rough out a few more staves! is a 3" wide limb overly wide efficiency wise? guess it would be easy to slim if so. i just would like to make bows above 40lbs atleast and i do like to draw around 29 inches, i dont have many bows under my belt only a hackberry shortbow, a few casurina bows which sucked from a bendy handle and heavy limb combo, apart from a small casurina shortbow i made for my sister. ive done plenty of research into bow making just lacked the wood, not very interested in laminated bows like most people seem to go to in aus.

[Ryan Jacob]

Yeah, no need for a 3 inch wide limb, if that’s what’s needed, I think you should move on to anpther wood. 2 inches wide with some heat treating is plenty.

[Hamish]

My blackwood bow was all heartwood. 

Woods that chrysal easily are usually stronger in tension than compression.


A 2&1/2" to 3" wide limb(paddle bow or pyramid style) is a good design to try out with unknown bow woods. A lot of the Australian bowyers going back twenty or or so years got a lot of success from these styles of designs. Many of the eucalypts in particular didn't conform to the bowyers bible  recommendations for  bow width and wood density, so the wide limbs  was a good way to get a bow out of a tricky, touchy wood. For a lot of Aussie guys that couldn't get other proven wood, the wide limbed designs were useful, better than no bow at all.
In general Northeren hemisphere species are a lot more predictable in their behavior, so if you can get locally grown ash,  oak, elm, mulberry, hackberry(as you found out) etc from parks or gardens they will perform excellent too. Like Ryan mentioned you don't need to go super wide for them.

Myrtle impressed me most from the Tasmanian woods for bows that I have tried so far, you could use more conventional designs with it.


NZnuka have you tried NZ Myrtle? I think its a little lighter in density than the Australian Myrtle, but might be worth trying

[NoShoesNoBlues]

Maybe i could make an acacia stave out backwards then haha! heartwood back and sapwood belly? would be interesting

[Rākau]

My blackwood bow was all heartwood. 

NZnuka have you tried NZ Myrtle? I think its a little lighter in density than the Australian Myrtle, but might be worth trying

Not really sure what plant you mean there Hamish. The  plant with the common name "NZ Myrtle" is a small ornamental shrub. . .
But on the other hand we have several species in the Myrtle family, Pohutokawa, Manuka, amd Kanuka to name a few of the well known ones. I am trying to make a bow out of Kanuka (3 broken so far  ) and others have successfully used Kanuka.  And i would love to try Pohutokawa too, seems like a tough stringy and flexible wood.
I think i will go with a big wide design in the next one haha, I really need to slow down and get a finished product that works!

[George Tsoukalas]

Have fun! Jawge

[Hamish]

Tas myrtle is nothofagus cuninghamii. I don't know if its exactly the same stuff in NZ. It would definitely be another nothofagus though.
Silver beech, myrtle beech, arctic beech are common names. I have no idea what its called in Maori language? From what  can tell your common myrtles look like types of Tea tree, like Manuka, whose flowers make a great medicinal honey. Smallish tree or shrub. I have heard bows have successfully been made of the stuff.
Tas type Myrtles are genuine tall trees, mainly temperate rainforest . I always thought many of the beautiful forests shown in Lord of the Rings movies were that type of myrtle tree. I think there are closely related trees on west coast temperate rainforests of Chile, and other parts of Sth America.

[Rākau]

ahhh gotcha! Nothofagus! not actually a myrtle I don't think, bloody common names get confusing don't they!
we call them beech tree's and have about 4 species,more if you include sub-species and yes you are right, majority of our bush is made up of nothofagus.
I'll have to give them a go, I cut some beech staves a few years back, but the bugs got them bad. I have plenty of access to beech though so i'll get some more.
funnily enough, in 2013 all our nothofagus got taken away from us, the scientific community decided to put them in the fuscospora and the lophozonia genus' instead.
 thanks for the info mate.