Osage plains bow (No.104)

[Del the cat]

Top class work as always
Del

[leonwood]

Lovely little bow Simon! The combination of fuming and the soup works really well, nice warm tones in the wood. Beautiful tiller and nice detail with that knot hole!

[dolgima]

Great bow !!
I have a question. By applying osage soup on the back of the bow, it adds more tannin on the back and makes darker color after fuming ?  soup itself also works like wood stain (?) or dye ?
is there any other wood that can be used as dye like osage orange ?  maybe black locust ?

Can I use persimmon tannin as well ?  because in my country it is used for traditional dye for fabric

[simson]

Thanks fellers! Glad you like that little stick.

Great bow !!
I have a question. By applying osage soup on the back of the bow, it adds more tannin on the back and makes darker color after fuming ?  soup itself also works like wood stain (?) or dye ?
is there any other wood that can be used as dye like osage orange ?  maybe black locust ?

Can I use persimmon tannin as well ?  because in my country it is used for traditional dye for fabric

Yep, the osage soup makes a bow look older within some minutes (even without fuming) and the tannin makes the color darker or better let the color get quicker dark in the fuming process. I've never used other woods for making a soup like osage, but I'm sure it can. Possible woods are mulberry, black locust or oak - all these woods have a good content of tannin acids.
I have no access to persimmon, so I cannot say if it works. Just try it out and you will see, I'm interested what you get and pretty sure some others also.
Tip: When you will store soup in stock, add some alcohol. Otherwise the thing will be affected by funguns soon.

Btw.: I'm interested what you said about the persimmon dye for fabric. Do you have some info or link?

[Thunderlizard]

Is it ill advised to drill a hole on a stave without a knot? Does the fact that yours is from a knot make it stronger than if it were drilled in a clean stave? Beautiful work!

[simson]

Lizard,
I'm pretty sure it can be done, in that manner I did. As the string (around the tips) prevent the wood from splitting. The horizontal string at the belly prevent the cutting in. Drill a hole with a diameter just to fit the string, sand out carefully and round the edges of the hole.

I wouldn't do it with soft wood like yew, eastern red cedar, juniper.

edit:
Just remember, I have seen African bows (long bows, not short San bows) with a drilled hole in one tip. But the string is only secured by a big knot on the back.

[Hawkdancer]

Real nice little bow!  Do you make the soup by just boiling chips and sawdust?  Haven't heard that phrase or technique before. What do you mean by fuming, haven't heard that before, either.  But I'm still learning this bow making stuff.  Thanks,
Hawkdancer

[dolgima]

Thanks for reply
I don't know much about persimmon dye. we use specific species which contain much more tannin than sweet persimmon. Because of high content of tannin it taste bitter. We harvest when it's green before it ripe for more tannin.  Then crush or grind persimmon and extract juice of it. The juice color is green but soak fabric in the juice and dry under the sun makes color orange. After drying, we sprinkle some water on fabric. By repeating this procedure the color gets darker. Instead of using juice immediately, if we ferment green juice about 1-2 years, green color juice became brown. I heard that for fermentation, we put some kind of yeast.

This dyeing method make fabric stiff because of tannin. I think there is many natural dyeing method that using fruit or plant which contain tannin. And by using mordant we can get different colors

I'm Korean  and in Korea we  use normally it for dyeing cloth but I saw on the internet that Japanese uses it like wood stain.

These are Japanese videos so I don't know what they are saying...
https://youtu.be/ltXshxYcmOk
https://youtu.be/y6NU0GU7jXM

In Japanese it is called kakishibu  you can find some informations and even products on the internet site.

http://www.kakishibu.com/en/index.php?dispatch=categories.view&category_id=1

In this site you can find some informations in English and  they sell persimmon juice. I think there is fundamentally not much difference between osage soup and persimmon juice in terms of using tannin.

[selfbow joe]

Wow nice work

[Taxus brevifolia]

Gorgeous

[simson]

Real nice little bow!  Do you make the soup by just boiling chips and sawdust?  Haven't heard that phrase or technique before. What do you mean by fuming, haven't heard that before, either.  But I'm still learning this bow making stuff.  Thanks,
Hawkdancer

Hawk, you're on the right track -  osage soup is made by boiling osage saw dust in a bit of water. Use the solution with some alcohol (prevents fungus affection). You can make a strong dye from this stuff, aging osage in minutes is no problem.
Here is some info about fuming: http://primitive-bows.com/fuming-experiments/



Dolgima: Thanks for the interesting info about Khaki.

[George Tsoukalas]

Outstanding! Came out great! Jawge

[Hans H]

hello Simon,
I`m always impressed when I see your craftmanship!

very nice shorty

Hans

[Halfbow]

I love this bow! Great work. I'm going to have to look in to that osage soup.

[simk]

Stunning work again Simson! Why do some of your bows have numbers and some don't? Cheers