Birch as Bow Wood?

[willie]

nice looking warclubs, Hope you don't have a real occasion to put them to the test.

the root burl is something I will have to look for. Now I will  have to pack my shovel and my saw when looking for staves. Most of the deformed saplings here are sort of bent over a foot or more out of the ground, but that looks like it was bent 90 degrees at right at ground level.

[E.H.]

i'm going to equip myself with a gta 26 battery powered mini chainsaw to harvest burls. it will be much faster than using a tomahawk ^^' of course for the root i'll have to dig and cut them with something else unless i can ready a little block of wood to put underneath and clean the root enough to use it.

as far as using them a friend of mine is an instructor of okichitaw, i'm sending him a macuahuitl i made as well as another gunstock warclub (he has a panabas inspired one from me as well). he used the one he had in contact sparring (not full speed for obvious reasons) and it held up beautifully.

[bassman]

I built 7 sapling white Birch self bows last winter. They are posted on a thread on here. Look them up, and look at the results. If properly done can make a very good self bow with a form ,and repeated belly heat treat.

[stuckinthemud]

How do you harvest burls, does it kill the tree?

[E.H.]

for the bent birch this is what i was talking about
 

for the burl, it's the root ball. it sometimes have a burl on it at the base. but if you just want to harvest the burl you'd have to cut the tree and take the burl... i don't think there's any other way if you only want the burl.

[willie]

Your war club has a very radical bend at the root. Could something like that be hiding under a tree with an easy bend like we see in the pic?

here is a pic similar to what we have here.

[E.H.]

i'd have to see the base of the tree to make sure... this was mine before i carved it.

[Stoner]

Ya know it's been a minute since I built a birch selfbow.... It was before I knew what osage, hickory, yew, etc was. I cut down a white paper birch tree. Seasoned it in my rafters, chased a growth ring, shot it all summer. Killed my first archery deer 50 yards from where I felled the tree. Still have the bow and shot it from time to time. Has a lot of chrystaling on the belly of the limbs now. I think due to an inexperienced bowyer. Just a memory maker/wall hanger now. John

[E.H.]

my uncle asked me if i wanted a yellow birch that he couldn't ''straighten'' back (was all rounded and growing towards the ground). i figured it would be a nice test to see if curved birch would work as a bow with reflex. from that tree i can also make an abenaki warclub and probably take some burls parts for knife scales if they are big enough (don'T quite remember the size...).

will cut it once i can find a place selling that stihl gta 26 pruning chainsaw... oh and the curved part i'd use for a bow would probably give a short bow judging by the lenght of the best part for that and there's a ''flat'' in the wood  on all the curve which is interesting to see...

maybe an abenaki style short double bow.... if i can split it properly since it's like 1.5 to 2'' thick at that place... i'm scared that it won't work lol but if the split passes then i'll be happy

by the way for double bows i'm just unsure to proceed now that i think about it... should the outer rings be towards the belly of the bow for the secondary bow? i mean if a tree is curved like this (( and split in the middle would it be better to make the two bows the same way and reattach them back together like the curve of the tree initially or switching the two staves to have the  rings disposed like (from back to the belly of the bow) inner rings, outer rings, outer rings, inner rings... if it makes sense... i could draw it if it's too confusing... i have trouble explaining what i mean