Favorite vs. Best bow wood

[blackhawk]

In order of preference of my fav woods....osage,black locust,yew,HHB,elm,hackberry...i love all these woods for different reasons,and it just depends on the mood i am in and what i wanna make,but the one i use the most is OSAGE.....LONG LIVE THE KING!!!!!!

Ive used many other woods but those are my fav

[H Rhodes]

I am stuck between winged elm and white oak. 

[Keb]

I inherited a bunch of bow wood when a friend passed on. Some is marked & some isn't. Some has been cut 15 years or more. I don't know what a lot of it is and I'm not smart enough to guess. However, I've made some bows from marked ash, hickory, osage, maple & mulberry.  My 1st was an ash that I didn't get to shoot much before a good friend "needed" it more than I did. My last one is pignut hickory. Now there is some nice stuff and prolly my favorite.

[coaster500]

I changed my mind after some thought I think for all the reasons previously stated I think Yew is my favorite.

[JW_Halverson]

Next choice is Osage that has been aged a good long time.

I have an Osage stave that has been standing in the corner of my workshop for the last 20 years, do you think it's properly aged yet? 

Richard

Not yet, but your great-grand daughter will LOVE it!

As for woods I have not had the chance to work YET, top of that list is vine maple.  I got a piece from CMB and it is curing away slowly and gently.  Every now and then I hear it murmer to me in the dark.  It speaks softly, gently, soothingly, whispering promises I dare not repeat. 

[gstoneberg]

Osage, but yew is nice too.

George

[jcrich01]

I have made pyramid bows and eastern woodland style bows from many different kinds of wood.  Several species of hickory, black locust, black cherry, black walnut, flowering dogwood, rough leaved dogwood, red osier dogwood, persimmon, eastern red cedar, sassafras, and sugar maple.  I have recently moved to Oklahoma which seems to be the land of osage orange, but am yet to make a bow from any of it.   I like hickory because it is very forgiving and almost impossible to break.  However, my very favorite wood is sugar maple.  It is far easier to work than the harder dogwoods, hickory, and black locust.  It makes really good shooting bows, and I think it can be quite beautiful if it is finished really smoothly.  If I am making a low draw weight bow i.e. <50lbs I like Sassafras it is really easy to work and smells wonderful while your working it.

[Elktracker]

I all of them but if I had to choose right now what my favorite was it would be Ocean Spray then after that Viney Maple then Yew.

Josh

[okie64]

I would like to be different just for the sake of being different but I would be lying. Osage is my favorite for all the same reasons as everyone else and its readily available around here. Ive worked osage, hickory, juniper, black locust, black cherry, ash and hackberry and I liked all of them for different reasons but if I could only use one wood from now on it would definitely be osage.

[Holten101]

Wych Elm, because of its history (the Holmegaard artefact was found close to my home), because its local, because straight pieces are easy to find, but knotty character pieces are abundant too....but mostly because I cant make any other wood compete with it in pure shooting effectivness.

Its forgiving to dry, forgiving to tiller and it can, and will make, allmost any design shine.

I would vote Wych Elm anyday....but I havent tried Osage:-(

Cheers

[dwardo]

Favourite so far is Cherry, prunus avium. Have tried yew a few times and can never get it quite right, lovely to look at but i allways mess up the .sg and performance suffers.
I do like ash and elm but ash tends to end up quite chunky.

[BowEd]

Osage,osage,hickory,elm,& did I forget OSAGE.Like to try some Wych elm though.Grass might be greener on the other side of the fence syndrome.....LOL.Have an ironwood roughed out bow drying which might open my eyes.All these woods are available close except wych elm.Does that even grow in the U.S.?

[BowEd]

This has been talked about before but the reason for that is because it is true.There are many different high points along the way making a bow.It starts when you see the tree and your imagination begins to rise,pulling the bark off to see what you got,those last few strokes removing the ring,getting it dead nuts tillered,the first shot from it,and last but not least chosing a finish.

[Holten101]

Grass might be greener on the other side of the fence syndrome

VERY good point....and this goes for bowmaking more than anything i think;-). I do feel its important to realise this, and appreciate the wood types we have locally.

Personally I much prefer local materials....using that gives me a feeling of....hell, I dont know what it is...it just feels right:-)

cheers

Morten (who would still give his right arm for a good piece of osage;-)

[rossfactor]

1. Plum
2. Plum
3. Plum
4. Yew
5. Thick ringed swamp Ash

I like woods that are easy to work.   

Gabe