Question about rosewood...

[HatchA]

Hi guys, I'm wondering if any of you have experience with using rosewood to make a bow?

I've an idea for a friend/mentor of mine and I'm wondering if rosewood is any good for bow-wood.

Thanks for any help or advice with this,

Steve.

[CraigMBeckett]

I have no experience with either but just have to ask if you are talking of the wood from a rose (flower) shrub/bush/tree or rosewood the beautiful dense, expensive dark redish wood?

Craig.

[HatchA]

Craig, I'm talking about Rosewood - the tree.  The wood luthiers use for guitars/fretboards and that fine furniture is made from.

[Badger]

The first few bows that I made were from Rosewood backed with maple. It was so long ago and I knew absolutely nothng about what I was doing so I couldn't really offer much opinion except that it worked and the bow seemed to shoot well. Beautiful wood. I also used fiberglass fabric over the maple backing so not truely primitive. Steve

[tombo]

Good tropical Rosewood's gonna' cost you! If you have a cheap supply, good on you!
I have some small pieces of 65 year-old rosewood from Guatemala that I use for nock overlays...Tom

[PatM]

There are many types of "Dalbergia" Rosewood. Honduras, Kingwood, Tulipwood etc.
 Check out the Wki list. Most of the readily available types are good belly woods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalbergia

[CraigMBeckett]

PatM

Thanks for the link.

HatchA

Mate I envy you if you have a piece you can use for a bow.

Badger,

Pity you don't still have them would have liked to see what they looked like.

Craig.

[Marc St Louis]

Brazilian Rosewood is now an endangered species so finding some may be hard to do.  I bought a board of it a number of years ago before it was listed as endangered.  It has beautiful grain and makes a very nice bow when backed with Bamboo.  Here's a couple Rosewood bows I made a few years ago

[HatchA]

Thanks for all the info and Marc...  those bows look gorgeous!!  Such a beautiful wood.

I don't have rosewood at the moment - it was an idea I had: to make a bow for my friend/mentor as a "thank you" for all the time and help he's given to me.  His surname is Rose so I thought a rosewood bow with a painting of a rose by my wife on it, name it "The Rose" and give it to him as a thank you.  I'll see if I can chase up some wood for it now that I know it's usable for a bow

Thanks guys.

Steve.

[CraigMBeckett]

Mark.,

As always very beautiful bows.

Thank you for posting.

HatchA,

There are various other woods that are known as rosewood or have rose in their name, if you cannot find Brazilian have a look for Indian Rosewood we even a have a gum in Australia that goes by the name of Rose Gum, it is not that hard and fairly low in density only 620 Kg/M3 but probably would make an inner lam.

Hope you find your wood.

Craig.

[Marc St Louis]

There is another wood being sold as Brazilian Rosewood at some exotic wood outlets here in Ontario.  It's actually Brazilian Ironwood and is not a true Rosewood but looks similar.

[PatM]

Marc, Not sure if you've ever made it to Century Mill in Stouffville but they have quite the selection of exotics.  If you can't find some of the more exotic types there you can always find a ton of straight Ipe or Bulletwood decking.

[Marc St Louis]

Pat
I was there about 6 years ago, that is where I picked up a Rosewood board.  They had a couple dozen boards but I was only able to find one that was suitable.  They also had some Brazilian Ironwood, also called Pau Ferro, but I already had some of that.