Loblolly pine is too heavy for arrows, at a specific gravity of .54. I had long wondered if a decent bow could be made of it.
A couple years ago an ice storm brought down a nice straight 10" dia. pine and I decided to get at least one stave from it. Yesterday I started making a bow from that stave for a smallish family member to use at targets. She has been using a bow of about 24#, but didn't have one of her own.
The finished bow is 61" NTN, 1-3/4" at the fades and 1/2" wide at the tips. Draw weight is about 24# at 26". It had a couple of deflexes in the stave and I only used heat on one of them to make the two just about match. Tiller pix is very blurry, but shows the kinks where the natural deflexes are. At least it shows it really does bend to 26". Bow does not seem to have taken any set. Got that out of my system. ;-)
I figure a loblolly bow would have to be 3" wide at the fades to draw a touch over 40#. I don't plan to try that, because I have much better woods under cover.
