Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: Green Wood on March 20, 2021, 12:28:51 pm
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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.
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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).
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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.
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You could try heat treating the belly.
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How has it been seasoned?
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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.
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And shooting it just kills my wrists with hand shock. But I think that is a design problem, not a wood species problem. I started with 72" length since that seems to be a "forgiving" length. Having built over 20 bows and broken more than half of them, I am just a little gun-shy. The last break was under full draw with kiln dried red oak. It was more of an explosion than just a break (three pieces hit the floor). One of the pieces gave my hand a nasty cut. That is why I am playing with other woods. Store bought kiln dried oak can be VERY brittle. And the piece I selected was a nice heavy piece with end to end grain. Anyway, I may reduce the length a little if my research indicates that will reduce hand shock. My 62" Black Locust sapling bow doesn't have any hand shock at all, and I think it pulls close to 30 lbs.
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No wonder it had shock and wasn't zingy. It is probably still quite wet.
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The marlberry bows are drying out nicely with the bark removed. I should wait to use it, but temptations overcome me and I shoot it for a few minutes each day. I am slowly perfecting the tiller and taking a few pounds off the pull. It was over 40 lbs draw when last I measured it. I am watching the back closely for any raised splinters, and will back the bow if needed. It's fun to shoot. The marlberry wood is tough stuff and I think it's going to be a good bow.
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A stave/bow that's still a bit green, should have the back, and end grain of the handle area sealed with something thin like shellac to prevent drying cracks. It will still continue to season via the unsealed areas, but shouldn't continue to check.
If you are getting hand shock, try heavier arrows.
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RE: shooting in while drying.
I should wait to use it, but temptations overcome me and I shoot it for a few minutes each day. I am slowly perfecting the tiller and taking a few pounds off the pull. It was over 40 lbs draw when last I measured it.
The wood should gain poundage as it dries, and if it is not continually reduced you might have another catastrophic break. I would consider perfecting the tiller and reducing weight to meet your poundage goal before shooting each day, if this is not already your present order of operations. Better to break it on the tree than in the hand.
thanks for the updates, this wood seems interesting.
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Using heavier arrows solved the problem of hand shock. The wood has been debarked for 2 weeks now, and is drying nicely. It shoots a little better now and a scraper tool shaves the wood nicely without pulling out chunks (like it did when wet). I will give it another week or two to dry, then do final sanding and brush on 2 to 3 coats of spar urethane. I just measured it to be pulling 29 lbs at 26". Since 26" to 27" is my normal draw length, I think I have reached a good stopping point.
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There is another thing I ought to mention. While working with the green marlberry wood, my hands developed small red blisters all over the face of both hands. It wasn't real bad, but bad enough that I quit working on bows for 4 or 5 days. I am now wearing gloves when handling the marlberry. Research indicated that there are quite a few woods that can cause skin irritations. Marlberry probably belongs in that group. Meanwhile, I plan to hunt down a really nice marlberry tree about 3" or 4" thick, straight, and minimum knots. I'll seal the ends with wood glue and set it in my shed to dry until next October.
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It's a lot easier if you work on several bows of same design at the same time. You only bend one bow or two, but tiller all of them in turn following the dimensions of the bow you bend. That way you will be doing no set tillering on some of them and be patient enough to do proper work on some of them. Good luck.
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First bow is ready for final sanding and urethane coating (unless I decide to back it first). I am reading about backing. The 2nd bow, which is about 3 weeks greener than the first bow, developed some cracks in the handle section within hours after I stripped off the bark. (See pics below). I am hoping I can just fill the cracks with epoxy and keep working on this stave. Is that a possible solution to drying cracks? Or should I just toss the 2nd stave and chock it up as another lesson learned?
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developed some cracks in the handle section within hours
still somewhat green in the thicker sections. Pick up a small can of shellac. it dries fast, comes off easy, you can reapply as needed.
I have never tried the tiller-as-you-dry method like you are doing, but watching with interest. (-P
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"Tiller as you dry" was a bad idea. But actually, I am not making this bow because I want or need another bow. I have 10 that shoot, and two that make nice wall decorations because they are developing fatal cracks in grain run-off sections (oak). My primary goal here was to see if the marlberry wood is good for bow making since there is a large supply of it in the woods near my Florida home. My conclusion so far is "yes" you can make a bow from it. But "no" it is not a "good" bow wood. Bare-hand contact with the unseasoned wood is just killing my hands. Painful blisters all over both palms begin within hours of contact. For me, that is a show stopper. Maybe with a well seasoned stave it would be a different story. I plan to go cut one more very nice sapling and let it dry all summer. Since I will head for North Carolina soon, I plan to hunt down some black locust and hickory wood to keep me occupied during the summer. I quartered some logs up there last October, and they are either yellow poplar or hickory (the leaves were already all gone). If those staves have dried, I will have plenty of wood.
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I sealed up the new bow with spar urethane. It really brings out the color and beauty of the natural wood.
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All done with Marlberry bow #1. It shoots just as well as any of my other bows. Next question.... will it hold up? I shoot for 30 mins just about every day, so within a week I should be pushing the 100 arrow count. I didn't back it (yet). But any signs of splinters or cracks on the back will send it back to the work table for backing. I added the jute twine handle this morning.
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After shooting perhaps 70 arrows, I really like the way the bow shoots. BUT... very close examination revealed a small crack was developing on the belly near a knot. I had left the knot area extra thick, but apparently it wasn't enough, and a hinge was developing. I removed a little more wood on both sides of the knot, which reduced the severity of the hinge, and I also reinforced the weak area with several layers of glass cloth and epoxy resin. Past experiences doing this have had mixed results. If it doesn't work, the bow still has plenty of poundage that I can take off more belly wood and re-tiller. Since I had some left over resin, I also filled the drying cracks on stave #2, which is the better of the two staves (but is at least 3 weeks "greener" than stave #1). The resin turns the wood pink on stave #2, which indicates to me that there is still a lot of sap in that wood. Now that stave #1 is pretty much dried out, the bow is quite snappy and packs plenty of punch. Unless it fails, it is destined to become my favorite bow. I will sand down my ugly fiberglass patch and re-varnish the limb to make it look nice again.