core woods

[stuckinthemud]

Ok, I know hard maple is the best and I do have a supplier about an hour away but my inner miser is always looking for alternatives.  I have ash, hazel and hawthorn,  also field maple(acer capestre), sycamore (acer pseudoplatanus ) and norway maple (acer platanoides) all growing wild within a half mile, also, holly, rhododendron and scottish broom. The ash and hazel are available in good sizes and good quality,  the norway maple and sycamore, as I understand it are not great bow woods.  The field maple is pretty knotty stuff but would be great for 5 piece bows. Any thoughts on the hawthorn, holly and broom as cores?

[loefflerchuck]

Ash is not bad. I have heard that Norway maple is good. I’ve heard some people say it’s a pretty good bow wood also. It is a ornamental tree planted along the a lot of the streets here. I know it is susceptible to fungus in this environment. I wonder if the wood quality varies with ornamental trees. I had a section of trunk that I split and made into siyas. When I boiled the wood to bend it turned the water very red. Worthy of a dye. Definitely not quite as heavy as rock maple. Yellow Birch is one of my favorite core woods

[bownarra]

Ok, I know hard maple is the best and I do have a supplier about an hour away but my inner miser is always looking for alternatives.  I have ash, hazel and hawthorn,  also field maple(acer capestre), sycamore (acer pseudoplatanus ) and norway maple (acer platanoides) all growing wild within a half mile, also, holly, rhododendron and scottish broom. The ash and hazel are available in good sizes and good quality,  the norway maple and sycamore, as I understand it are not great bow woods.  The field maple is pretty knotty stuff but would be great for 5 piece bows. Any thoughts on the hawthorn, holly and broom as cores?

You could use sycamore but it can be prone to warping once you apply the sinew (don't know why but it has happened to me twice). Ash can be used quarter sawn BUT quarter sawn wood leads to a less stable bow....
Field maple - no
Holly - definately not!
Rhododenron - definately not!
Broom - definately not!

When you have put in many hours, have made your bow and are approaching full draw....do you want to hear a tick as the core breaks or get to full draw
There are solid reasons certain woods were used. There have always been experimentors and I would hazard a guess that a whole bunch of woods have already been tried and then passed on. The Turks planted and tended non-native Tartarian maple stands. Do you think they went to all that trouble for the fun of it
Don't forget it must be perfectly straight grained and absolutely free of any knots.

[stuckinthemud]

Thanks both,, some surprisies there. I thought the Norway maple was a bit too soft, and I am also rrally surprised about the sycamore.  I know the ash is best used on the quarter but that is right on the edge of my comfort zone. Why no to the field maple?  Campestre has been identified in several museum turkish bows and is the hardest of tbe european maples.  Any thoughts on the hawthorn? Biggest issue I can see is it is so unstable when drying, I am also still in shock that hazel can be used as it is so prone to crysals.

[bownarra]

I've got a 120# bow with a sycamore core
Clean hazel isn't at all prone to compression problems - it is when there is a pin knot I would keep the hazel for under 70# bows. I'm not confident enough to try it. Too much work to waste on marginal core woods.
Field maple may grow differently where you live but i've never seen a piece that was good enough for core wood. If it grew clean, why not
Whats wrong with ash on the quarter. Cut a log, split it, cut out a piece on the quarter?
Hawthorn is too dense, knotty, twisted and prone to tension failures.

[stuckinthemud]

There is nothing wrong with wood on the quarter,  it's just something new to me, all the wood I have worked has been character high crown sapling, except the most recent, a quarter sawn lath from Del but now I'm so used to challenging timber that working straight, clean rectangle section timber feels weirdly easy, too fast, too straightforward...
The field maple round here is terrible but plenty that has 50cm between knots/blemishes in the bark so could be ok for 5 piece bows?   How did you get around the sycamore warping?  Hawthorn is abundant here and 99 percent is awful but a couple of the trees are forest growing and have lovely straight stems but prone to tension failure ? Best keep it for self bows then.

[bownarra]

I meant for selfbows and its too dense.

[stuckinthemud]

Harps then, its the best timber for carving I've ever worked with, better than apple or even box

[JNystrom]

Ash is not bad. I have heard that Norway maple is good. I’ve heard some people say it’s a pretty good bow wood also. It is a ornamental tree planted along the a lot of the streets here. I know it is susceptible to fungus in this environment. I wonder if the wood quality varies with ornamental trees. I had a section of trunk that I split and made into siyas. When I boiled the wood to bend it turned the water very red. Worthy of a dye. Definitely not quite as heavy as rock maple. Yellow Birch is one of my favorite core woods

Yep, i use only norwegian maple. And i've understood Ivar also in most of his bows. Its growing everywhere here in the nordic countries.

[willie]

maple is diffuse porous as is  birch.  Is this a criteria for good core wood?  density varies quite a bit between trees  within species, at least on this side of the pond.  ruling out an otherwise straight grained tree by species alone might be unnecessarily limiting if the density is there.

[bownarra]

Yes ideally you wanr diffuse porous wood. Most birches aren't any good but there are exceptions. Around 0.60s.g. (you can go a little lower on light weight bows but not advisable for your first few hornbows), superb gluing properties and flawless straight grain with zero hints of knots or grain swirls. If you are going to be using a bent core then it also has to be a great steam bending wood.

[stuckinthemud]

I stumbled over a paper that said that the best bow woods have a helical thickening to tbeir cell structure,  but I have no idea what that means.


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257280329_Anatomy_of_Wooden_Core_of_Ottoman_Composite_Archery_Bows

Fab that norway maple is good, I'm surrounded by the stuff