Thin ringed osage???

[lowell]

Been looking at some of my staves I thought may be dry enough to make bows with this winter.

 Picked out a nice straight stave but it has very... VERY thing rings and I'm having a heck of a time getting to one ring.   

 If i get it as good as I can, could I still use it and back it??    I've been working on some sinew and have rawhide or maybe a snake skin I could use.

 Or should I move on to a thicker ringed stave and forget this one??

 I was hoping for a 64" to 68" bow??

[YewArcher]

Can you get a picture up of what you are working on? Back shot and a cross section shot of the end of the stave so we can see the rings.

SJM

[bowmo]

When I get wood like that I just say screw it and don't worry too much about the rings and back it with rawhide. Thin rings are nasty even if you do get a solid ring for the back...

[YewArcher]

I actully prefer them Bowmo. Why do you think they are nasty?

SJM

[Pat B]

The last couple of bows I've made have been thin ringed osage. I made 67" ELB(1 1/4"wide), 49" shorty bend through the handle(1' wide), 60" static tipped (all heartwood) and a 60" static tipped 50/50 sapwood/heartwood(both 1 3/8"wide). All are excellent shooters. All took a bit of set. All are raw hide backed except one with prairie rattler skins.All have violated back rings.      Pat

[lowell]

Here's a couple pics of what I'm working with. Hope they can help!!

  So far your posts have me wanting to keep going with it and back it!!

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[lowell]

whoops .... another ....

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[Coo-wah-chobee]

..................I like thin rings better than thick..........bob

[Mark Smeltzer]

I chase a ring on almost all of my Yew bows necessary or not.  It is worh the effort, I say keep going.

Mark

[welch2]

I agree, I prefer thin rings too. I use a scraper or a pen knife on edge around knots .Take your time ,work in good light .I even mark wood to be removed with a pencil sometimes .

Ralph

[tom sawyer]

Thin rings are fine, but tend to have a high percentage of spring wood to the denser summer wood.  Your stave shows this, if you made a bow out of it as is then you'd be using that whitish looking 1/2" as your wood and that is going to be less dense and will take relatively more set.  You can see a couple of areas where the summer wood ratio is a little better, I don't know if you want to dig down that far but it might make a better bow.  In any case, yes backing will work and I'd make the bow just a litle wider and/or longer to compensate for the higher amount of spring wood. 

[Coo-wah-chobee]

.................Hmm Interestin' ! My experience hasnt been that thin rings take more set as a matter of fact those that I have made(many) did not take as much set as the thick rings. Only make d-bows anymore that probably has somethin' ta do with it.............bob

[tom sawyer]

There are definitely competing factors going on when you consider ring thickness.  The "good" side of a tree is the side that felt some tension when growing, and that is generally the side with thinner rings.  You get some nice reflex out of those kind of staves.  So as long as the spring/summer ratio is decent, it is likely to perform better for this reason.

Making bendy handle bows is a good way to lower stress too, you don't have those nasty fades to try and tiller and in general you wind up with more working wood per limb even though it might bend a little harder since its shorter.

I'm not trying to discourage anyone from making a bow out of a piece of hedge.  I'm all for using what you have, and an average piece of hedge can make an above-average bow.  That particular blank has a nice dense looking outer 1/8", plus a couple of denser looking sections in between some of the lighter looking stuff.  If you could possibly design it so the denser loking stuff was on the exterior of both back and belly, it wouldn't matter what the middle section looked like.

[George Tsoukalas]

Like Tom Sawyer said you have some places were the rings look pretty dark and thick. In the middle of the butt end of the log there appears to be such an area. Is that one ring? I always try to have 1 continuous  ring for the back. I've spent days going back and forth until I got it.  The tool of choice is a scraper, curved scraper and/or cooper's tools. You need a curves scraper or cooper's tools when the rigs have irregular thicknesses and indentations. But you have to exhaust all possibilities before you give up on the back. My philosophy is that a backing should never be a crutch but an insurance. Jawge

[bowmo]

Osage is deffinately not yew. Thin rings make yew denser and stronger, thin rings in osage make it weaker and less dense on average as there is such a high percentage of early wood to late wood in the rings. Also making an unbacked osage bow that has ring violations on the back is not an option in my opinion like it is with yew. I can't imagine why anyone wood prefer tight rings in osage. Harder to chase a ring, and that solid belt of wood on that back you have with one ring is much more prone to damage that could pop back splinters then with a good thick ringed bow. All the truly superior bows I have ever seen were made from osage and had dense thick ringed wood.

dan