-Yes, Chinaberry will make a bow. I have one hanging on the rack and I want more. It's a low density soft(ish) wood and seems like it wouldn't make a bow, but I tried it on a whim and was very impressed. I'm certainly not an authority on the species, with my limited experience, but I'll share with you what I found.
First off, I cut 2 trees on my brother-in-law's Central TX property, sort of by accident–that is, I had memorized the leaves of both the invasive Chinaberry AND the native Western Soapberry aka Wild China Tree (a known bow wood, and lookalike species that has identical yellow berries), and in my head I had cut Soapberry, but then I realized I had cut Chinaberry. When I cut'em, I thought to myself, this seems like soft, weak, low density stuff, but I loaded it in the truck and brought it home with me. After I realized what I had cut, I decided to go ahead and try to make some bows from it. After all, at some point, some bowyer has to try new unproven species, or else we'd never know.
One tree was about 5" in diameter, the other was a sapling pole, not 2" thick. I would recommend not messing with those skinny sapling poles, because after a few years of growth, the inner heart rings get pithy and are worthless. I found that these trees had a few 1/8" thick white sapwood rings, then a pale brown transition ring, then a couple of dark brown pithy, almost putty-like rings in the center, that don't make good compression wood on the belly of a bow, so you can't count those in the thickness of your limbs. I made a skinny mini ELB bow from the little sapling pole, as an experiment and noticed compression failures on the belly, in that dark soft heartwood, but the sapwood is so elastic that it stayed together. On the second tree, which was older and more established and about 5" in diameter, I got 2 staves from the split. The bark is fleshy and peels off easily within a day of felling. I sealed the ends and stuck a layer of duct tape on the peeled backs of the staves (an experiment, to slow drying, which worked well - no checking on the backs) and clamped them to posts, with some corrections clamped-in green, which worked well on this wood. It took and it stayed, so I recommend correcting string alignment, etc. via green-clamping. I got a little mold under the duct tape, because it was still so juicy, but it was just on the surface of the cambium and cleaned-off no problem.
I laid out the stave much like any other whitewood. I had 1 3/4" of limb width to work with, so I left it full width in the inners, then tapered down to about 5/8" tips. The design was a 61" nearly/slightly bendy handle, narrowed a bit in the grip. The back is crowned and belly flat, which worked well, as this wood seems very elastic in tension and didn't mind the crowned back at all, nor did it mind all the little humped pin knots from twigs (which looked ugly and troublesome, but were no problem at all). My bow has that paler-brown transition ring showing on the belly and it seemed to be ok. I was worried, because it's so porous-looking -I could've shoved a sewing needle in the end grain of the early wood, it's so open. It responded very well to heat treating, which I did at floor tiller and then again after tillering, before drawing it deep. At 61" in length, it made a forty-something pound bow @ 28" draw. I draw 29-30", but I stopped at 28", when I saw a hint of set appear, but I'm sure I could safely pull it further, without breaking.
All said, it seems like you could lay out your typical ALB profile, just leave the limbs thicker than normal, to account for the lower density and hi elasticity, so you don't come in under target weight. Another weird aspect of this wood is that the white sapwood, when wet, oxidizes to a lemon yellow, but then when you work or sand the stave it's a pale yellowish-white again underneath. I left a little cambium on, which gives the back a nice white and taupe streaked appearance. I still have the 2nd seasoned stave to work, but I plan to harvest s'more of the stuff when I head back out to the property. And seeing as how Chinaberry is on the Top Ten most invasive species list in Central TX, it's our duty to chop it down and make bows from it! That's all the info I can think of at the moment, but lemmee know if you have any other questions.
–John
