Hickory belly? Why?

[wolfsire]

I've seen a few of these lately.  Hickory backed with boo or sinew.  I'm ignorant, so I'm not saying that this is a bad choice, but from what little I know it appears to be.  Sinew and bood have the greatest tensile strength.  Of the North American woods, so does hickory, which is why it is also used as a backing on lams.  I have not heard that hickory has great compressive strength, but that it performs better in low moisture, presumably to resist set, indicative of no so great, if not necessarily so bad, compressive strength.

Assuming you have a choice of woods, why use hickory on a belly?

[Pat B]

Hickory makes an excellent backing. In dry conditions it works well as a belly but for most of us it is not the best choice. I have built a boo backed hickory that the boo overpowered the hickory so I ground down the hickory as a core and added an osage belly slat.
   Dan Perry of Utah has won world championships in flight shooting with hickory and boo backed hickory but he lives in a very dry part of the country. At 6% hickory can stand up to almost any other belly wood but most of us don't live where the humidity allows for 6% hickory.     Pat

[YewArcher]

......Just for the record..........

I HATE hickory in every way for bows. 

Steve

[JackCrafty]

A heat tempered hickory belly works pretty good.

[islandpiper]

Dang, wouldn't ya just know it.....I just bought a truckload of it yesterday.   I guess at this point I'll let you know how it works out.  In sawing out staves I had a thin slice, 1/8" left over and it bends, and bends and bends.......about like spring brass.    If I can carve it, i'll be it will make bows.   As for "set" it can't be any worse than the White Ash I used for a bow last week. 

piper

[adb]

Nothing wrong with hickory! Especially in dry climates. Makes excellent self bows, and in my opinion, is the best backing material there is. Excells in tension, not such a hot belly wood, but I have made several bamboo backed hickory bows, all of which turned out well.

[Ryano]

Hickory sucks in compression. I could never figure out why someone would want to back it with bamboo. Sinew maybe but bamboo no. 

[Papa Matt]

Piper, what happened with that White Ash?

And don't be ashamed of your hickory haul  , hickory is an excellent bow wood, just does better when it's dry and the belly is heat treated. Like Pat said above, there have been records set with good 'ol hickory. I'll take it any time I can get it. I built a 60lb longbow from it a while back that wasn't even well built, heat treated, or backed at all, just a plain-jane self-bow. I used to lay hard plastic 5-gallon buckets down and blow holes through the backs of them from 30 yards out with it and still have the arrow come out the other side and go a few yards further into the grass.

Everyone has a different personality and uses for it, so therefore different preferences in bow wood. I personally got nothin' but respect for a good ol piece of hickory. If you let people talk you out of it, just let me know and I'll take it off your hands. 

~~Papa Matt

[Pat B]

Don't get me wrong. I love a good hickory self bow and hickory backing strips. It is probably one of my favorite self bow woods but you have to get it dry...and try to keep it dry. In the winter, around here, it is pretty dry and a good hickory self bow shines then. 
   Piper, if you have 1/8" thick strips of hickory they would be perfect backing material for bows if it is wide enough.    Pat

[cracker]

I recently built a hickory bow and posted here. It shoots very well and has minimal set. I used the car dry method and kept it there between scraping sessions. several coats of polyurethane and keep it waxed and it works just fine in high humidity I live in middle Georgia.

[Kegan]

As was said, hickory is jsut a bit of a moisture-slug. And since your wood of choise usually works best in the relative humidity of your area, most people don't care for it. Around here, wood stops at 11% MC. So hickory bows usually fall into two categories: pretty good, or duds. With wood being weaker in compression when wet, hickory needing to be lower in MC, and it's extremely strong tension strength, it's easy to see why it could overpower it's own belly, or become overpowered. So heat treated hickory is usually an excellent bow, as its one shortcoming is overcome.

[sailordad]

well i am making a boo/hickory bow, i live in minnesota,summers can be very humid one day and dry the next,winters are as dry as a popcorn fart.
i probably wont use it for spring turkey,but fall turkey and deer season you betcha ay.

now i do have a question,only because i have seen a few people mention it.
how would you heat treat the belly on a laminated bow without the glue letting loose?
now i used bow grip 100 (from rudder bows archery) cured it in my heat box at 160 degrees for 4 hours ould this be ok to heat treat the beely and not have to
worry about the glue leeting loose?

                                                                           peace,
                                                                                  tim

[JackCrafty]

Hmmmm...prolly too late to heat treat.  Glue does funny things when heated.

[Pat B]

Tim, you heat treat the belly slat before glue up.     Pat

[sailordad]

if you heat treated before glueing ,wouldnt you be scraping off the treated wood during tillering then?
or does heat treating the belly slat heat treat it all the way thru?

just curious as i have never tried to heat treat a belly before, but am interested in doing my next b/h r/d bow that way.


                                                                                   peace,
                                                                                       tim