Whitewood longbows

[Jurinko]

Here are few longbows I made recently. The adult ones are 1 1/4" wide at the handle with heavily rounded 5/8 ratio limbs. They are a bit whip tiller made, since they are long and not that strong.

1. Some tropic wood (Fava Amargosa) backed with maple 2mm thick, #38@28", 73" ntn. I tried this wood from curiosity. It is quite heavy, but does not handle compression well. It likes to raise a splinter, so I backed it. The curve is nice, bow has a mild kick but cannot be used for higher poundage at this design, as it got 2" set at low pounds and serious length. I keep it because it looks nice.

2. Maple longbow named "Mary Rose", 70" long #50 @ 28". Stained with oak color oil stain, shellac and sprayed alkyd lacquer. It has some 1.5" set after unbracing, quite good for the 5/8 design and no heat treatment. Epoxy putty nocks.

3. European oak longbow "The Black Prince", 72" long, #49@28". Stained with palisander oil stain, shellac and lacquer. Epoxy putty nocks. Set is barely 1".

4. European oak longbow for my daughter, 63" long, some #30@24", 1.1" wide. Stained dark as above. Epoxy putty nocks.

[Jurinko]

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[Arrowbuster]

Great looking bows. I love the tips. When you say epoxy putty nock , what material exactly did you use?

[Jurinko]

Black Milliput epoxy putty from ebay.

I formed a rough nock on the tip, slided it down (I oiled the tip otherwise it sticks to the wood), let it harden, then glued it back with long curing epoxy. It is easily workable stuff when hard. I cut the nock through the epoxy into the wood, so the bowstring actually holds on the wood and the "horn" is for the looks.

[Arrowbuster]

Thank you, I may have to give that a try.

[stuckinthemud]

How do the oak bows perform? When I started bow making the advice at the time was to avoid using oak? Don't suppose you know the genus?

[RyanY]

Those all look great! I wouldn’t consider any of them whip tillered at all. Really not very elliptically tillered either which might account for some hand shock.

[Jurinko]

I can compare it only to maple with which I have the most experience, but it is better in compression - it has half set.

I made oak Sudbury and crowned the back like it was made of sapling and it exploded on tillering tree at #50/28" despite being cut off the side of the board, being effectively stave bow, so it *might* be worse in tension - but I never tried such desigh from maple either.

It is European/English oak, we call it summer oak (Quercus robur) so it might be different from the red oak, which is more prone to set.

[Selfbowman]

Nice period craftsmanship.

[gifford]

Well done, novel use of epoxy for the 'horn nock', english long bows rock.

[bownarra]

Those all look great! I wouldn’t consider any of them whip tillered at all. Really not very elliptically tillered either which might account for some hand shock.

+1
Elb's should have a fairly pronounced elliptical tiller. If limbs are balanced etc handshock on an elb is almost always due to the outer limbs/tips not bending enough.
I reckon the milliput would give a strong enough bond by itself without oiling, removing and then re-gluing the nocks. It is an epoxy itself.

[PatM]

Yes, most just cast the epoxy directly onto the prepared bow tip.

[lonbow]

Very nice bows and nice tillers!

I´ve never heard about using european oak as a selfbow wood (only read about it as a core wood for european crossbows with composite prods). Your result and the low set look very promissing. I´ll definately give this wood a try!