Hawthorn longbow - work in progress

[Springbuck]

"If it behaves like pear, its very good bow wood"

I have heard this, but I have had no luck at all from pear wood.  I cut 5 year old suckers from a domestic pear intending to splice them, but they were extremely brittle.  The next attempt was a nice-looking stave from those stinky ornamental flowering pears you see all over where I live.   The wood was very hard to work and had this wavy, chipped  appearance like you see on the fancy guitars.  It was very dense, but hard to work shave, unpredictable to split, and would chip out in odd ways, almost like it had curly grain in two directions...

[Springbuck]

  I haven't tried hawthorn for a long time (due to lack of finding a good stave recently), but the last time I did I had a 9" reflexed,  5" dia log, clean as a whistle for knots and such.  I thought I was in the money, but the grain spiraled so tightly that it ran across the face of the back at about a 30 degree angle.  Beyond my skill.

[FilipT]

Update: weight loss of bow has been slowed down, seems its nearing the end of drying.

[Springbuck]

Hawthorn is lovely to work with but that looks like a challenge.
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Funny, that looks like every piece of hawthorn I've ever found.   . Except mine usually have spiral grain as well.

[mikekeswick]

I've made quite a few bows from hawthorn and I don't rate it - certainly it isn't as good as osage! There are many better woods. I think it is weak in compression for its density, is spiralled, twisted, full of knots and often has 'grown over' imperfections that you find too late!
It is best in wider flatbows.
Good luck with your longbow though

[FilipT]

Update:
Working for two days on the tillering. Going slow and steady as its so hot out there. Simply I don't want to be outside!

Here are the things I noticed:
- At cross section of 35 x 23 mm and length of 185 cm ntn, this bow is ridiculously strong. Hawthorn is a true warbow wood.
- I managed to get pretty even bend until the 20" at almost full brace but discontinued because of high poudage.
- My string is a bit too long (brace is almost 6") for some reason. Maybe the high poundage stretched it? It was made two years ago for my 185 cm ntn 50# bow. It is 18 strands of either B50 or FF. Maybe if its B50 it stretched?

[DC]

I've only used B50 a couple of times but I found it stretches a lot when new. If you can pre stretch it it would help. Maybe pull it with a ratcheting cargo strap and let it sit for a couple of hours.

[FilipT]

So, brace height rapidly dropped during tillering. When I got at 23", brace dropped to barely 5", instead of 7" at the beginning. I can't believe this guy told me when he made me this string that is from 18 strand Fastflight. So this string is now ruined.

I should have known better and its partially my fault because I think he once said that Dacron is Fastflight. That should have been red alert to me that this guy doesn't know much about bows, even though he is superb archer.

[Mo_coon-catcher]

Can you twist the string up tighter to bring your brace back up? Worst case, you could probable untwist one loop and twiat up a rat tail to use a bowyers loop. If it is fast flight it's possible they didn't stretch it after making it and the slack pulled out. When I twist up a D97 string I usually pull out 1" of length from the strands pulling together tightly. Then it barely budges after that. Though they still seem to stretch a bit on bows over 100#.

Kyle

[Strichev]

Stalker, man, get some Chinese braided fishing string; I've got some and it turns into a really nice fast flight-like string. It doesn't stretch and you can't even tell that it's braided. Also, it's really nice to have a piece (a ring or something) of metal for adjusting the length of the tillering string. You can then have loops on both ends and adjust it to any length you want in seconds. Just make sure that the string is a bit overbuilt and that the piece of metal has no sharp edges.

[FilipT]

Twisting didn't do anything, I have tried it already. That string was used on 40# longbow two years ago when this guy made it for me.

I am probably gonna go with what Strichev said. I thought about this idea already.