Marlberry wood for bow?

[Green Wood]

Has anyone ever built a bow with marlberry wood?  That's MARLberry, not MULberry. The scientific name is Ardisia Escallonioides. It's a very hard and heavy wood with a smooth bark. The wood is pink when wet, but dries white. It only grows in Central to South Florida and the Caribbean.  Google doesn't find much about it and automatically renames you search string to MULBERRY instead of MARLBERRY. I roughed out two 72" sapling bows and am waiting for it to dry out more.

[Hamish]

Interesting, never heard of marlberry, let alone as a bow wood. If its like some of the other Southern US, and Caribbean woods, quite dense like you mentioned then there is a good chance it will be suitable for a bow, as long as its not brittle.
The wood being pink when wet, reminds me of stopper wood from Florida, I think its related to guava. It was reputed to be an excellent bow wood historically. It turns red when in contact with alkaline solutions.

[Green Wood]

"Will it bend" is the big question. I sliced off a thin sliver about 1/4" wide and 8 inches long and tried to bend it. No luck. It is TOUGH STUFF. It will be about another week before I will start floor tillering though. It was still alive just 2 to 3 weeks ago, and didn't dry much until I shaved down the belly wood. It isn't quite as hard to work as wet sugar maple, but it will make you sweat in cold wind shaving it down with a draw knife.

[Green Wood]

Proceeded with floor tillering to the point where there is just a little bend.  It feels good and has lots of spring. If it works, it is going to be a powerful bow. I plan to leave the bark on the back.  The one REAL NICE thing about this wood is that there is LOTS OF IT out there in the coastal woods. I have two staves and started with the worst one (most knots) just in case I mess it up. The 2nd one doesn't have many (if any) knots at all.  It's still too wet to work well with a draw knife. The draw knife tears chunks out of the wood. I will now wait another week or two for more drying.  Except for a badly placed knot in the belly of one of the limbs, I am beginning to get some hope that this will make a good bow. 

[Pat B]

I would suggest removing the bark before building the bow. If the bark can't handle the tension and cracks the crack can travel down into the bow. Adding certain kinds of bark, chokecherry for instance, after the bow is tillered is a different situation.

[Green Wood]

Here are some more pics of the wood and the progress I am making in attempting to tool it into a bow.  I am now perhaps an hour's worth of sanding and scraping until I can put  a tillering string on it and move from floor tillering to a marked-off pole with pulleys and a digital pull-down scale. As you can see, I have taken off a lot of wood. I now store it in my hot garage to facilitate drying.  If this wood works well, I will cut a few more saplings to dry out for next winter. Soon I will head for Western North Carolina where I have an acre of mostly maple and yellow poplar, (and a few Black Locust trees). Black Locust makes a real nice bow.

[Green Wood]

Based upon an estimate assuming 2.5 pounds per inch, it is now a 65 pound pull-weight bow. I want it to be a 35 to 40 pounder, so I have a lot of scraping yet to go.  Since the wood is still so green, the draw knife doesn't work very well, so I took it down to rough form with a power planner and belt sander. But things are getting too close to use such aggressive tools without appreciable risk of causing a hinge, so next I will use either a palm sander or wait for it to dry enough to shave it with a draw knife or pocket knife. 

[Green Wood]

Pic below is first brace! (almost). For a 72" bow the brace probably needs to be 7.5 to 8.0 inches. But for starters I braced at 5.5" just to see how the tiller was looking.  My digital scale says it's 32.5 lbs at 24" of draw. So that would compute to around 42 to 43 lbs at 28" draw. I shot a few arrows at 24" draw just to see how it shoots. With the low brace it smacked my hand every time, so I gave up on that. It is still too green to to take it to full brace and test fire a bunch of arrows, so I will leave it to dry out before I do final tillering and break-in shooting. So... is Marlberry a good bow wood? I think it just may be. Meanwhile I am going to do some research on forced drying to see if I want to go that route.

[Green Wood]

A lot of folks mention lashing a sapling down to keep it from bending and maybe add a little reflex to the tips. This advise definitely extends to marlberry. I got some very interesting bends in my saves. Also, i got a few cracks in the wood of the second sapling when I tried to force dry it in a hot garage. Taking the stave down to rough (floor tillered) stage worked good. But after that, lash it down and plan on some wait time. Don't try to force dry marlberry. Once again I stress: this is MARLberry not MULberry. (But I did see a few mulberry trees in the woods when I last went hiking).

[willie]

Looking good. I read up on marlberry and understand there is guite a bit to be found in Flagler County, so its on the to do list to find some when I get there next.

Did your stave that you forced dry check in the handle?  Thick and thin can be a problem when quick drying.

[Green Wood]

I cut two staves, 3 weeks apart. Both were about 2" thick at the widest point.  I sealed the ends with wood glue. I let the first stave dry for 3 weeks in a covered shed at normal Florida temperatures (it was a cool spring this year). I then shaved both staves down to rough bow dimensions and moved them to a hot garage. The newer of the two is the one that developed cracks in the limbs and also in the handle area. Luckily, the cracks were in belly wood that got shaved off. I just checked both staves and there are not any visible cracks. One is ready for full bracing and final tillering. The other one is almost done with floor tillering. I am going to harvest 3 more staves, seal the ends with glue, and leave them for next fall. I will fasten 2 of them down to 2 by 4 studs with blocks under the tips to try to force a little bit of reset during drying. There is a LOT of marlberry out there in the woods (and a lot of it are nice straight saplings for at least 72 inches).

[Green Wood]

I finally debarked the bow. After bracing it at approximately 7.5" and shooting a few dozen arrows, I noticed the bark was cracking and beginning to separate from the underlying wood. So, I carefully scraped off all the bark with a draw knife. It only took about 45 minutes (working slow and careful). The cracks in the bark did not extend into the wood, and the resulting bow doesn't look like it will need to be backed. Next time I am going to let the stave dry for at least 3 months, then debark and cut down to rough bow shape. Then let it dry some more if it needs it. 

It shoots. It hits the target. It looks kind of cool. But, it just doesn't have the zing that my very similar Black Locust sapling bow has. Not yet anyway. I will play with it a bit after it dries some more. And... I think I will keep looking for a better wood choice.

[hoosierf]

You could try heat treating the belly. 

[Yooper Bowyer]

How has it been seasoned?

[Green Wood]

Seasoned? They were growing in the ground 3 to 4 weeks ago.  The older one is doing pretty good (4 weeks since harvest). The newer one is developing some very noticeable cracks in the thick handle area. I will try filling in the cracks with super glue or epoxy.  This was just a trial run for marlberry wood which doesn't seem to have much of a bow-making history.  But I suspect the original residents of south Florida or the Caribbean Islands gave it a try. It may be a nice toy after it dries some more and I tune it some. Right now, at 72" length, it pulls 26 lbs at 24" draw, so it's probably around 35 - 40 pounder. I won't pull it past 24" until its dry. I don't want to break it or give it too much string follow.