Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: sadiejane on May 22, 2011, 01:07:15 pm
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know lots of folks make bows outta hickory. but is the shag bark variety decent for bow wood? know where there s huge stand of smaller straight trees.
cant wander in the woods without seeing bows or arrows in ever tree or shrub....
this is just a small selection of all those shag bark in this particular area
(http://i878.photobucket.com/albums/ab346/sadiejane9/woods%20stumping/DSCN8413.jpg)
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I happen to like it all though hickory in general isnt my favorite. I prefer the HHB and Maple for some reason.... the shagbark takes a lot of set, but can still make a great bow that will be tough to break especially cutting through the rings. On a side note the scraps are good for smoking meat! ::)
Russ
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I've been using shag bark hickory for a ton of my bows as I cut a large one a little over a year ago. It's tough as nails. Haven't gotten one to break on me yet. ;D
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Hiockory is hickory! Most folks can't tell the difference between them as bow staves. Hickory is very hygroscopic and absorbes moisture readily from the atmosphere so working with hickory you need to keep it as dry as possible. Keep it in your house with the A/C or in a hot box between work sessions and store the finished bow in a dry area. I don't think you can get hickory too dry in the Eastern US but if the humidity is high hickory gets mushy and slugish.
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hickory is hickory
use it,itll make fine bows
just make sure its good and dry and keep it that way while working on it before you stress it or it will take set
ok this will be attempt #3 at posting this
people keep adding as i type :P
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Go for it Sadie. I have made lots of hickory bow and none have broke, set happens however.
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Um....yup. shag hickory recurve selfbow. Maintained a straight profile. Just keep the MC down in it.
(http://i1181.photobucket.com/albums/x436/blackhawk28/00small29040853.jpg)
(http://i1181.photobucket.com/albums/x436/blackhawk28/00small54120247.jpg)
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ok, heading back this afternoon and cut me a few of those little trees. seal em up and hang em up to dry...
thanks guys!
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When you cut your logs split them in half, seal the ends and peel the bark. ;)
Extremely nice recurve, blackhawk! 8)
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Blackhawk...sweet looking Recurve...and Damned Nice Shirt too.... ;D...Can Take the Boy out of Michigan...but you can't Pry Michigan out of the Boy!!
And Sailordad....Whaaaaah..... ;)
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Blackhawk...sweet looking Recurve...and Damned Nice Shirt too.... ;D...Can Take the Boy out of Michigan...but you can't Pry Michigan out of the Boy!!
And Sailordad....Whaaaaah..... ;)
;D ;D ;D
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Thanks guys... I finished that one up back in january. I posted it on a couple other sites. Maybe ill repost it here as well.
Sadie make sure you peel the bark after you cut n split into staves. I know ya get tired after cutting n splitting hickory,but peel that bark asap otherwise it'll be a whole lot more work if ya don't.
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Shagbark is what we have around here, and makes a pretty nice bow!
As far as set... poppy cock! I keep them nice and dry in the hotbox and no-set tiller them. Even without tempering they wind up with usually 1" of set or less in a regular design, and so far I've yet to make one that has more than 1" of string follow.
Like any other wood, and animals and people and what not, you have good and bad pieces. The bad pieces just make lighter bows, the good pieces make heavy-weight rocket launchers ;D
As for the bark, a sharp drawknife and twenty minutes will get me down to the soft inner bark. When I throw it in the hot box to dry it uually all dries up and peels off. Piece of cake, and leaves some cabmium for camo.
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what makes a great bowyer is understanding the limits of not only your skill but your material. no matter what you choose as your material learning to exploit its strengths and design around its weakness is when your skill level becomes ART. being defined as "the faculty of performing or executing expertly what is planned or devised".
so to answer your question ,Shagbark or any hickory properly dryed,designed ,tillered and sealed will yeild not only a good bow but an exceptional one.
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HI Blackhawk. That is a wonderful bow, and I love the tips, very nice curve. I"ve been making long bows now for a year, and getting pretty good at it. I even made one from a water ski. It's of the Modoc style. I also make them from hardwood flooring. Some say that kiln dried isn't good, but every one has turned out A-1. I want to start doing reflex/deflex, and recurve. Can you tell me how you got such nice tips on your bow? Did you use a heat gun? or soak it in water, or steam?
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Canuck...none of the above :D
I boilled the tips and bent them over a wooden form I made. I basically traced the circle of a 5 gallon bucket on a 2x6 and cut it out and sanded/planed her down to a nice smooth nontwisting arc. I feel the need to boil tips going more than 45 degrees,and my bow stave was cut a week earlier. Its best and easiest to bend large and severe angle recurves when the woods still really wet and green. With the whitewoods leave it in your form for 24 hours to be safe. I just bent up some 70 degrees statics on a elm stave I cut last fri eve. I cut, split,and roughed a stave down to rough bow dim fri eve then bent one tip sat then bent the other on sun. Fun stuff watching wood bend like a noodle. >:D
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thanks for the info on forming those tis.
soooo...
i have another questions about the hickory
ive read where i could and looked at lots of pix of hickory bows.
appears to me that most(if not all) are done similar to yew. in that the sapwood is the back?
am i right?
or is there ring chasing to be done?
thanks again for all your help
this is gonna be fun!
been wanting to try some other woods.
so far ive only made bows from osage
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Here's my only input on Shaggybark - it tends to have more knots than other types of hickory I've experienced and if you split the cut log right away you will tend to have more side to side warping as the split staves dry, even if you seal them well. As they dry they will want to warp a little where there are knots. I've cut Shaggybark before and split into halves, that were straight when I split them, only to come back months later to see them crooked. It's not really bad, you can usually work with it, just a good thing to know as you select a tree or trees. Do yourself a favor and try to avoid knots and if you can stand the wait let the whole log sit a few months before splitting. Other than that, I LOVE hickory, and if you've got access to all that consider yourself lucky :)
CP
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Peel the bark n some cambium and that's the back. And the whole bow will prob b all sapwood,depending on what diameter tree you cut. The cambium is pink. You'll see. It'll show itself where you didn't remove it from the white sapwood by turning color a minute or so after the" air" hits it.