Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: E. Jensen on May 06, 2015, 11:47:14 pm
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Is anyone else not overly thrilled with osage? I just finished my first osage bow and I don't know, doesn't seem to be as amazing as I've heard. I've made a mulberry bow which I love, hackberry, hickory, red oak, yew, all turn out really nice. I know it makes a good bow and I know the fault lies with the bowyer and I need to revisit design. I guess what I'm saying is working with osage isn't as instinctive to me as other woods. I think I'm not used to how heavy it is.
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It takes less Osage to do the same work as white woods. I spent the first 12 years or so with ash, hornbeam and some locust. Five years now with more Osage and I like it very much. I still like hickory, but the shine is gone from the rest. I'll use them, but with less hope for a great bow.
Jim Davis
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Lets see some pictures of the bow. What are the dimensions of it?
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I've not even made a handful of osage bows so I don't have a lot to compare either way but locust consistently gives me more thrills and performance than any of the osage I've used. I'm looking to get my hands on more osage of course but it'll be a while before I find room to work among my beloved locusts ;)
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I think osage is the best bow wood.
But it is a very heavy wood!
No other wood is able to stand such narrow or short limbs or tremendous overdraw.
Regular designs will never benefit from its outstanding capablities.
Osage is the perfect wood for somehow "extreme" bow designs.
Michael
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True Redhawk.
Go narrow/short and strain the nuts out of it!! My first couple weren't all that until I realised the above. Now I don't make them much over 1 1/4 wide and probably an inch or two shorter than whitewood bows.
That said i've got my best performance out of locust. Consistently.
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It's common to overbuild osage bows when coming to them from woods that can't do what osage can. It's just a design thing. Push its limits. You'll figure it out.
I came from the opposite direction... I started with petite, short, radius-bellied osage bows drawing stout weight, and dealt with underbuilding other woods until I became familiar with their limits too. All part of the learning process.
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I will take all the Osage anyone wants to send me:) It's the best wood for bow building...
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Osage varies a lot in in weight and density, there is just OK osage and there is great osage. When you work with a piece of the great stuff you will always think of that piece when you think of osage.
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Its 1-1/4 tapered to 1/2". It is long though, about 70", and thin ringed. Eventually I might pike it I think.
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What draw length are you drawing it? I'd suggest shortening it several inches and thinning the tips. See if that makes it any better.
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It took me a few bows to realize how great osage is for all the reasons mentioned already. Keep at it.
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About 28" and it is pulling about 55-60#
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As for the wood itself, Osage ain't my favorite bowwood,BUT from a Bowyersperspective Osage is by far the best,
- very easy to work
- very easy to steam
- easy to dry ( even quickdrying is possible)
- excepts tempering very good
- can get violated a lot
- ............. the list is endless and Osage is just the only wood with all those characteristics, that's why I like it very much but it's not my favorite.
If I have to rely on it , I always choose Osage.
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You could cut it down 6" easy. For me, my few osage bows are 4"-6" shorter than my white wood bows. I tend to keep my hornbeam bows closer to the osage dimensions however. You can push that one a little farther than other white woods in my experience.
Looking back I think osage is a little more forgiving to new bowyers which helped my confidence a lot. It is hard to work and tough on tools, but will accept novice tillering & over bracing a little better. There's something about having to chase that ring as well. It gets you all zen before you actually start making the bow. It slowed me down a bit which also is a big help for a newbie. I would say I broke more white wood than osage in the beginning making the same dumb mistakes.
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Bows, for the most part, are personal preference. Having said that, I've seen a lot of osage bows, particularly at OJAM, that are just over built. Long equals heavy. Wide equals heavy. Get the weight off, way off. A light weight osage bow is a rocket launcer. 70", in my opinion, is insane. Most of mine are 60-62". The same goes with the width. Take off the excess weight. I have never understood why in thw world people use such over built osage bows. There is just no way they can compare to a lighter weight bow, and with osage, you can and should use design that allows for this.
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I love longer bows. Just something about length does it for me. The mulberry I finished is 71" and its the best bow I've shot. But it's also much lighter than osage. The literature says 10-15" light but I think its more so. I guess I just weighed them both and for roughly equal volumes, 16oz vs 20oz, which is right around 15%. But even though I like long bows, I also like fast arrows. So since this osage is already at my upper limit of weight, I'm going to wait. When I'm ready for more power, I'll pike it.
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Length doesn't necessarily equal heavy if the tiller is good for the design. I have a reputation for being anti-osage and to be honest it's one of my favorite woods. Works amazing, chasing rings is a dream, takes almost no wood to make a bow, and it's an absolutely beautiful wood. I've loved every osage bow I've made. If you design and build a good bow it'll be a good bow no matter what wood it's made of.
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Osage is to bow wood as the Yankees are to baseball. ;D
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What's baseball?
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Not all Osage is gold. Soy made a scrap bow for me that is 56" tip to tip, inch and an eighth wide at the grip, and used to pull 55#at 26" draw. It has since cured further and pulls 58 lbs now. I wanted to make a bendy Iroquois influenced in similar dimensions and it came in at 52" tip to tip, inch and an eight wide, and both bows are almost exactly the same thickness, but mine came in at 33 lbs of draw.
Two bows almost exactly the same dimensions, but the shorter one is drastically lighter in draw. Go figure. Heck, I.recurved the tips and heat treated them and they no longer work, effectively putting drastically more bend in the working limbs...so there it is!
Maybe that stick you got was just low grade stuff. It is certainly plenty overbuilt in the length department and piking MIGHT help. I suggest you try another stick of osage. Best of luck, keep scraping wood!
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Osage is to bow wood as the Yankees are to baseball. ;D
I love Osage, but I despise the Yankees
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Osage is to bow wood as the Yankees are to baseball. ;D
I love Osage, but I despise the Yankees
I am with you.
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if you ain't thrilled with it you're doing something wrong
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Yes, I am. I am used to being good at everything right away >:D curse you osage for humbling me!!! On my next one I'm focusing on thinner tips as well. I've come to consider 1/2" thick even for non-osage.
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Everyone's saying osage is good for extreme designs like other woods aren't :o
I've pulled locust and vine maple alike tree inches past their drawx2 limit at one inch wide with good results. One of my strangest looking bows was a high-wrist one inch wide "skinnybow" (like my short bendies but with the grip) with about fifty inches of working limb pulling to twenty six inches. All it takes is some tip adjustment for desirable string angle. Also locust is stiffer, less is required for the same resistance.
If locust can do something like that with its tendency to fret then I wonder how many other woods are treated as less than they are.
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When you say locust are you meaning black locust? We have BL as an introduce species here. I have also heard of honey locust but it's not as good is it?
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Correct, DC.
Huisme - I would acknowledge that many people like different woods and have high success rates with them. However, I believe osage is at the top of the chart because it is so user friendly and forgiving as well as capable of handling all designs and climates extremely well. No other wood, except possibly yew, even comes close. Your distrust of osage is more likely founded in a lack of exposure to it, but don't let me convince ya. ;) Different strokes for differnet folks.
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My current shooter is an overbuilt Osage bow. 70" from nock to nock with 3 inches reflex, very wide out of the fades but pyramid taper limbs to 3/8" nocks. 68# at 28" It isn't a speed demon but it thumps a heavy arrow out there. I will probably rework it into a slightly shorter bow with similar stats.
If you arent happy with your osage bow, and you would like to be happy with it, then it needs to be reworked. I wouldn't approach shortening or "piking" it as simply cutting off 4-5" on each end and carving some nocks in. You will gain a lot from that piece of wood by finding the shorter bow within it. Like others have said, osage is extremely elastic and dense. Bow making is a balance between straining the wood and not overstraining it. A bow design that doesn't strain the wood isn't going to have much cast. Also, get those tips skinnied up! And quite playing with your juvenile wood for now! ;) ;D
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When I work B. Locust it sort of looks like Osage even has a yellow tinge to it . I do not really do self bows mostly laminate but I sure love Sugar Maple its very forgiving the grain is generally consistent and its not expensive out west. There is a reason they used maple for core wood besides price and availability. It bends like a dream with dry heat. 8)
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Yep, black locust. You have to be careful with it because it frets easily from tillering issues and over-stressing (I've yet to quantify what over-stressing is on "average" locust) but simply put its higher modulus of elasticity/stiffness means less wood and mass is required for the same resistance. Tempering the belly makes the wood quite set resistant even in those narrow profiles.
Locust also works from the bitter cold of winter and blistering heat of summer in the Nevada desert to the muggy rainforest of Washington's summer. People can say no wood besides osage does this but the fact is locust has and does ;)
The two flaws are the need for heat treatment and its lower jenka hardness, meaning the wood will dent easier than osage or hickory. Toast the belly and don't use it as a sword and you're set ;)
I haven't used honey locust but its numbers and reputation put it pretty well into the middle tier of woods where I think locust is right up at the top with yew and osage.
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I've sung it before and I'll sing it again along the tune to the national anthem...this is the bowyers anthem.
Osage can you see
By the bowyers bench
What so proudly we hail
As the king of all bow wood.....
And as it says on the tillering board at twin oaks......OSAGE IS KING >:D
I know I sound like I'm an osage snob,but I'm not...in the last year I've finished one osage,n the other dozen+ were non osage
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I prefer to elect my officials >:D >:D >:D
I'm sure it could be better than I give it credit for but I need to try a lot more to come to that conclusion ;)
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B. Locust rocks :) if I had two choices of osage or locust it would be a very hard decision for me.
No need to pike your bow just give it an elliptical tiller. No problem with going long with sage or indeed wide....just don't mix the two and give it the correct tiller shape = no handshock and fast arrows. I don't know why everybody seems to be saying the same old thing about length.
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one bow is not enough to know,, :)