Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: superdav95 on November 04, 2024, 10:41:12 pm
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saying its a non traditional bow is an understatement to say the least. is the words of gowan, shes a strange animal!. the reason for building this bow is 2 fold. first to fit a need and second to see if it can be done. the need is that im looking for a draw of 30-31 inches while still maintaining an overall length around 60" or less. this bow will be a 5 piece bamboo bow constructed much like my others which have been good shooters but limited to 28-29" draw. Let see what we get. It will be a highly deflexed riser instead of the reflexed ones ive previously made. I did not measure any angles but eyeballed the angle to be similar to my trad bows. the levers will be static and fixed. the bending is all happening between the riser and the base of the levers. this bow will start out at 60" tip to tip. I will see if it survives. the Idea and hope is that the deflexed set of limbs on the riser will reduce some of the strain to enable me the draw length im after. no laminations just bamboo limbs and all glued and served to bind together. obviously this is still rough yet and will be a test bow and the next one will be nicer. Ive included a few pics of my backset jig for 5 piece boo bows when i bake the belly. cheers
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Unique!! How come you don't just make it a bendy handle? At 60" you could get a bow that draws 32" if you sinew back it a little. But the trick is to not go all the way to the tips with the sinew since the tips don't bend as much! I used to think bendy handle bows were silly but I have definitely grown very fond of them and have not noticed a difference in accuracy.
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Yes I may do that also. I’ve got a short piece of Osage I may try that on.
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I dont know if you are interested in a short self bow that will pull 31 inches, but ive been building long draw short self bows for years now. I finally got it pretty well figured out. Id be happy to help you wuth one.
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I dont know if you are interested in a short self bow that will pull 31 inches, but ive been building long draw short self bows for years now. I finally got it pretty well figured out. Id be happy to help you wuth one.
Sure I would! I’ve made longer bows to 31” no problem but anything under 60” with the wood I have access to has been a challenge. This little project here is mainly cause I was bored really. I had some time on my hands from hunting. I missed a nice deer the other day and giving spot a rest. Pierce suggestion of a bendy handle has been on my mind for a bit but to be honest those kind of bows just don’t quite do it for me aesthetically. It’s just a looks thing for me I guess. I will do one eventually but personal preference. I suspect you would use a good piece of Osage and incorporate a deflex bend with some reflex?
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Yeah if I'm going for a 31" draw under 60" i would make it a bendy handle bow that is 50"ntn with 1.5 layers of sinew staying 4" from the tips with the sinew. And the woods i would use would either be American Elm or Osage because of their high elasticity.
I am very much a sucker for juniper but juniper in this situation would blow up. I mean you could do a 60" bow and get a 30" draw but that's just too big of a bow to me...I also only have a 24" draw length so I sick to 48" and under for my bow lengths.
And aesthetics are definitely a factor, I hear ya. Without a handle bows tend to just look like a stick or a toy, but I have very much grown to like them! You can make them suuuper small. If I'm making a sinew backed osage or elm bow it only needs to be 40"ntn and I can still get my full 24" draw. Practically speaking i just love the small form factor.
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Yeah if I'm going for a 31" draw under 60" i would make it a bendy handle bow that is 50"ntn with 1.5 layers of sinew staying 4" from the tips with the sinew. And the woods i would use would either be American Elm or Osage because of their high elasticity.
I am very much a sucker for juniper but juniper in this situation would blow up. I mean you could do a 60" bow and get a 30" draw but that's just too big of a bow to me...I also only have a 24" draw length so I sick to 48" and under for my bow lengths.
And aesthetics are definitely a factor, I hear ya. Without a handle bows tend to just look like a stick or a toy, but I have very much grown to like them! You can make them suuuper small. If I'm making a sinew backed osage or elm bow it only needs to be 40"ntn and I can still get my full 24" draw. Practically speaking i just love the small form factor.
Yes the small size is appealing to me to give it a go for experiment with. Thanks for the ideas
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I love watching your experiments, Dave. Always very interesting and well thought out.
How wide are the limbs? They will have two pieces of bamboo laminated together to form the full thickness?
Mark
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Dave I’m not sure I understand this bow build. But you have to have fades in the limbs at the attachment points if not it will hinge there. Been there done that.
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I love watching your experiments, Dave. Always very interesting and well thought out.
How wide are the limbs? They will have two pieces of bamboo laminated together to form the full thickness?
Mark
thanks mark.. ya the limbs are about 2-2 1/8" wide just out of the riser and taper from there. its only one piece of bamboo for each limb. no laminations. its basically the same as my other builds instead with deflex instead of reflex. limbs are heat treated the same and fixed to the riser the same.
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Dave I’m not sure I understand this bow build. But you have to have fades in the limbs at the attachment points if not it will hinge there. Been there done that.
there is no fade like a standard build. there is a slight relief ramp on the underside where the belly of the limb meets the riser to prevent hinge. it works quite well on these 5 piece bow builds using bamboo. the limbs are narrowed and tapered to get the bend good.
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its only one piece of bamboo for each limb. no laminations.
So the concave side in this picture is the belly surface, with the outer skin of the bamboo as the back?
(https://i.imgur.com/b34iiIu.jpg)
Mark
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its only one piece of bamboo for each limb. no laminations.
So the concave side in this picture is the belly surface, with the outer skin of the bamboo as the back?
(https://i.imgur.com/b34iiIu.jpg)
yes correct.
Mark
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Hey guys. Quick update on this little bow. It ended up around 58” long and pulled only just under 46# at 30-31”. Was hoping for around 50 but next one maybe. I ended up using an old set of boo limbs that were kind of a failed experiment from last year and figured I’d try it out on this experiment. The nice thing at least was that the limbs were pretty well already tillered for bend. The bad thing is that these took more set then I allow for on these due to not cooking them quite enough for eliminating moisture and hardening. By this point the limbs were pretty stressed and worked over to salvage for good performance so I set them aside. It was a good test to see if the whole idea would work anyway. It ended up doing not too bad and was very nice to shoot. I had less hand shock on this bow then some of my production fg bows. The speed was not quite comparable but that might be due to the previously stressed limbs. Speed in low 170fps with a 450-460 grain arrow. My 50# sanlida x8 shot the same arrow at 187fps for comparison. I’m hoping the new limbs will be little Better. It did shoot very well and arrow flight was good and true. I will do more closer to center shot on next one with fresh limbs. I will also not set the levers at such a drastic angle too.
Here’s a short vid clip of me shooting this bow.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ewwtdp3vzr8tmzwmrodqc/IMG_9351.MOV?rlkey=q5khr0b8jehvwvtek5l3fajjr&st=ab6wuno2&dl=0
(https://i.imgur.com/ruHVSwa.jpg)
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very nice! it's a perfect circle at full draw! great :OK
what kind of boo is it?
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very nice! it's a perfect circle at full draw! great :OK
what kind of boo is it?
It’s moso large pole about 5”
Diameter
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Dave,
Do you have an unbraced picture as well?
Mark
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heres some more pics a few differet angles. hope this helps
(https://i.imgur.com/Gzs3lMx.jpg)
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Interesting, Dave. I have a couple of laminated wood slats I kept from my daughter's old bed that I might try something like this with. They're pretty springy, fairly stiff but bend almost double before they break. Trying to decide whether they're worth the time since I have a few nice, locally harvested staves I'd rather work with.
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I would love to try a horse bow with siyahs on it. But I'd be scared to death they'd bust loose at full draw, so I've never done it.
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I would love to try a horse bow with siyahs on it. But I'd be scared to death they'd bust loose at full draw, so I've never done it.
I’ve never had one pull off on me. I use high heat glue stick to stick them down and then wrap the heck out of them with b55. This little bow shoots pretty good for overstressed recycled limbs. The next one will be closer to 50# at 31”. The siyahs were too sharp of an angle too which I’d reduce on the next one. Anyway I would recommend this as a great option
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Interesting, Dave. I have a couple of laminated wood slats I kept from my daughter's old bed that I might try something like this with. They're pretty springy, fairly stiff but bend almost double before they break. Trying to decide whether they're worth the time since I have a few nice, locally harvested staves I'd rather work with.
WB. If you want I can send you a set of limb slats to build one. I’d even heat treat them for you to play around with. Let me know
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Oh, that would be cool. I'll PM you my vital stats. But no hurry. I seriously have at least four other bows in the pipeline, and at the rate I build them I'm probably good for several years. ;D
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I recall from somewhere I cannot remember now, that the angle of non working reflexed tips (siyahs), are most efficient when straight up and down, neither pointing foreward or back, at full draw
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Willie, You may be right. I’m not sure on that though about the Siyahs angle. The reason for my wanting to reduce it a bit on next one is to have less noise on release. I find these fixed sharp angle levers are prone to string slap at the heel area when shooting. I’ve tried adding cork and leather padding to deaden the sound a bit with some of them which helps a little. A little less sharp of an angle virtually eliminates this issue of slap in this area and makes for a much quieter shooting bow. I have not seen much difference at all in speed performance in comparison of the two versions and find that they are easier to tame. I’m working on a new bow now with fresh limbs to see if I can get closer to 50# at 31”. I’ve changed the amount of deflex in handle area too if the new one to make it more mild deflex and not quite as much as last one. We shall see how it tillers out. Cheers. here are some pics of the new one glued up. the angle as mentioned is not as sharp at the handle deflex or at the levers. just have to do some file work and get it wrapped, tillered, tuned and shot.
(https://i.imgur.com/ra9Z5sw.jpg)
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heres some more pics a few differet angles. hope this helps
Thanks for the pictures. Was there a lot of string tension at brace? How was the early draw weight?
Mark
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heres some more pics a few differet angles. hope this helps
Thanks for the pictures. Was there a lot of string tension at brace? How was the early draw weight?
Mark
Mark. I didn’t do up a force draw curve or anything on this one yet but I would say that just by feel it has less early draw tension then my more reflexed versions of these bows. Its late draw feels about the same though. It came as no surprise to see this as the backset adds some early tension.
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a little update on these little bow experiments. I finished up the second one i show here that had less deflex and less sharp an agle on the siyahs. I wrapped and served it all for testing and it shot really well actually. the limbs held up very well and and did not lose much if any at all of the little gentle reflex heat induced into them. I kept it mild as I want to take advatage of a longer draw if possible. speed testing this bow was cut short as i had a siyah split on the one end and followed a grain line from the string groove. oh well no damage done to the limbs so i made another and reinforced with some buff horn on the sides as ive done before. I tapered the backside of the siyah to allow for better string slippage back there with the large string loops. I made these siyahs very light and want to give this bow every chance to perform its best. prior to the siyah splitting on me when shooting i had gotten speeds of 187,188,193 shooting a 500 grain arrow. the pull of the bow was 51lbs at 28". Im wanting the bow to end up at 50 lbs at 29-30". when i got out to 29" it split the siyah. I suspect that if i kept it under 45lbs it would likley had been fine. pushing the limits of the oak. Im always carefull to follow optimal grain for these levers to avoid issues but wood still has its limits. so I did a little sanding off the belly and put a basic stain on it and sealed it with a laquer. Ill wrap with a dark brown b55 string and reshoot it and see where it ended up. bend looked good upon shooting it initially so hopfully i didnt mess with it too much. we shall see how it shoots. fingers crossed.
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nice hope to see a fulldraw pic with the fixed siayh.
do you think there was any twisting of the siayah at full draw? do you have to adjust your siyahs/string alignment to prevent twisting once they are glued on?
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nice hope to see a fulldraw pic with the fixed siayh.
do you think there was any twisting of the siayah at full draw? do you have to adjust your siyahs to prevent twisting once they are glued on?
thanks willie! yes im hoping to get it all wrapped and shooting again in a day of so when laquer dries. with the stain under it it takes a day or so. the siyahs stay put and so long as they are on straight im good. ive had some with little twist but easy enough to heat and reset them again. I do most of my shaping and thinning of the siyahs with file work after they are glued and set to avoid the twist and have good string alignment. glueing them down while in block dimensions make this easier and makes it visually easier to detect problems and make certain to get them straight. the serving holds them down really well. Ive made 70lbs versions of these and glued and served the siyahs with no problems. any very minor tweeking can also be done to fine tune the siyahs while thinning them too after glue up. this is especially the case when i do side supports of horn after the fact.
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ive had some with little twist but easy enough to heat and reset them again.
sounds like a good method. so you adjust the siyah on the limb? I wouuld imagine adjusting the limb might work also, but I would be inclined to get the limb pulling with as little twist as possible before working the siyah
maybe it's easier to adjust limb twist with bamboo that it is with other woods?
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ive had some with little twist but easy enough to heat and reset them again.
sounds like a good method. so you adjust the siyah on the limb? ( yes. I set it with the glue to be as straight and aligned as possible by eye then only minor tweaks if any are needed later.). I wouuld imagine adjusting the limb might work also, but I would be inclined to get the limb pulling with as little twist as possible before working the siyah
maybe it's easier to adjust limb twist with bamboo that it is with other woods? (Yes I find that the bamboo is easier to keep from twisting as it’s super stable and rigid in its current form. As long as you get thickness taper sorted out and equal on both edges for thickness consistency your golden.
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heres a few more photos of the new one all wrapped up and now waiting to fully dry up before shooting again. as discussed earlier with willie its very important to get those siyahs straight and inline with each other. thanks for looking.
(https://i.imgur.com/jsPXhKy.jpg)
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did some speed testing on this bow today and had some slower speeds due to the level of humidity today. we had rain earlier today and i fugure this played a role on speeds. I may retest on a different day. I’ll post a few videos here of me shooting. I had my daughter filming and the video got cut short and didnt show the speeds! arg. I redid the video to capture some speeds. all of my bows were 10-15fps slower today compared to the other day. 182,183fps isn’t too bad at 10gpp. I’m happy with this. I suspect the speeds will be better on less humid day. This being said and despite the slower speeds then hoped I really enjoyed shooting this bow today. It’s insanely accurate shooter. It is very close to being a center shot bow with the arrow pass cut out. Arrows come out with no deflection and it’s dead in the hands. It quieter too then the other one when comparing the noise. I’d hunt with this bow! Thanks for watching.
Heres a few videos
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/m594gojr72mfmaedg1uma/IMG_9425.mov?rlkey=0tt3r98p5n8v4uug4fv58th5n&st=8ai3w601&dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/escgdli7br3sdgovfmflt/IMG_9433.MOV?rlkey=o2af87ashuonw88n6dz75izfd&st=5p01l54x&dl=0
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WOW that's a beauty, love seeing your work, the wraps are prefect, I know that took some time. :)
Pappy
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WOW that's a beauty, love seeing your work, the wraps are prefect, I know that took some time. :)
Pappy
Thanks Pappy! Ya it takes a little time but makes for a secure and clean look. It took me about an hour to do all the wraps. Not too bad. I’ve done a number of them now and can do it fairly quickly now.
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I'm impressed with the wraps, too. Really nice work.
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I'm impressed with the wraps, too. Really nice work.
Thanks Thomas.
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Another great one Dave you amaze me.
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Another great one Dave you amaze me.
Thanks Arvin.
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Beautiful work, Dave. I like the horn overlays on the tips and the wraps. Your work is really impressive! Thanks for posting your work here.
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Beautiful work, Dave. I like the horn overlays on the tips and the wraps. Your work is really impressive! Thanks for posting your work here.
Much appreciated Will. Thankyou.
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Well gang im at it again! let the experiments continue. posted here are some new pics of a related test build of a 3 piece boo bow with seemless integrated siyahs on the limbs instead of separate levers glued and served onto the limbs. The hangup with attempting this in the past has been cracks and splits on the bends. Ive tried every known process to get this done with exception of something crazy like ammonia which i had no intentions of trying. Ive tried steam, boiling, oil and dry heat along with varied timed pre soaks for days at a time and used a metal band also all resulted failures until now! I had a good conversation with Kevin, (sleek) here actually and he and I were talking about my bamboo bow builds and wondered if id ever tried bending in my tips before. I proceeded to tell him about all the attempts and failures explaining that very dry bamboo pole i have access to dosent bend well and had only worked with greener pole. This later got me thinking and stewing about it after our conversation and wondered if i had perhaps given up too quickly. I hit the shop and began some more test bends and after about a dozen more failures i figured this wasnt going to work and just accept my defeat. then it dawned on me, when i was boiling or steaming the boo tips and quickly moving to the jig i would see it evaporate very quickly and crack every time. So i figured why not wrap it in cyran wrap prior to moving to my jig then bending. well that was the ticket. worked like a charm. gonna have to let them dry for a while but they held up nicely. These pieces shown here are just test pieces and may use them for a lighter weight kids bow. the nice thing about these recurves will be the reduction in mass on the tips hopefully resulting in faster bows. we shall see! anyway thanks sleek for bringing this back to my mind and wanting to try it again. heres a few pics.
video clip
https://photos.app.goo.gl/4EnJYtTRRh7DjtNJ6
(https://i.imgur.com/3IdkiAa.jpg)
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Dave,
Are you adding underlays or other pieces to keep the tips stiff or letting them open up?
Mark
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Dave,
Are you adding underlays or other pieces to keep the tips stiff or letting them open up?
Mark
Gonna try both. Gonna do some working recurves and then also try curved underlay of boo lam with rind side facing out towards archer. The should bend nice that way too.
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Ive made been making lots of these and testing them this past week while my recurves dry up. this latest version has a center shot adaption to the handle which is more center shot then the last one i built. still have some shaping to do on it yet as its a little chunky. It shoots very well actually. ranged around the mid 180's to upper 180's fps at 28" draw likley around 42-43lbs. The bow is only 44lbs maybe 45 at 30" draw. shooting 390grains arrows. Still breaking it in and working my way out to 30" draw looking and watching for any issues. so far so good. thanks for looking guys. more to come!
im gonna try to post a few short video clips here using imgur.
1 of 3
https://imgur.com/CYgpVBB
2 0f 3
https://imgur.com/xyOLqio
3 of 3
https://imgur.com/a/sk60aqH
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hi dave
I missed your bennding posts earlier, but two thoughts come to mind re: bending tips
1. boat builders sometimes "steam in place" with the wood inside a plastic bag and the steam piped in from a steam generator...tighten the clamps gently as you go
2. if you have issues with the tension side splintering you can clamp a strip of metal to the outside of the bend and force all the movement to the compression side.
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hi dave
I missed your bennding posts earlier, but two thoughts come to mind re: bending tips
1. boat builders sometimes "steam in place" with the wood inside a plastic bag and the steam piped in from a steam generator...tighten the clamps gently as you go
2. if you have issues with the tension side splintering you can clamp a strip of metal to the outside of the bend and force all the movement to the compression side.
Hey Willie. Yes I’ve watched some of the steam bags in use and considered it. The cyran wrap is essentially an adaptation of this and gets me to bend one area only. The metal strip I’ve been using and it works well on the outside of the bend. My boo strips are being bent with rind side on the back. It’s much harder to bend the way I’m doing it I’ve found.
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hey guys. a little update on this project. mores testing to come for sure but seems promising. I managed to make a little bow out of those little test pieces for testing out my bending recurves jig system. they seem to be holding at brace. havent had a chance to shoot it yet but seems to be aroung 30lbs draw by feel. the profile looks ok i may need to tweek it a bit yet. the top limb is beding a little more then i like. I did add some inner support under the little handle to build up a little more. Ive done this before and will do more testing on this. will update after holidays. heres some pics.
(https://i.imgur.com/D98SoZh.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/PvnOsxb.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/ThLsg2c.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/mRXoTVp.jpg)
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Outstanding! You literally got my ALL my attention in this!
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It’s always nice learning from your experiments Dave. Thanks for sharing.
Bjrogg
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Outstanding! You literally got my ALL my attention in this!
Thanks Kevin! Ya it should be interesting for sure to test this little thing out. I’m hopeful that my recurve tips will hold. Gonna do an actual set of bow limbs and get some more draw weight.
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It’s always nice learning from your experiments Dave. Thanks for sharing.
Bjrogg
Thanks bj! More to come on this.
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Very interesting! Thanks for sharing your experiments. Bamboo is really interesting stuff. I have a friend in Alabama (Chase, are you reading this?) who has tried to scrape bamboo down for laminations, without much success so far. It seems to work by different rules than wood.