Pine hunting bow what???

[aznboi3644]

I know it sounds crazy right? I thought so too.  But, so far it has actually been turning out pretty well.  I know I know pine is a terrible bow wood.  Question is how many people do you know have taken a deer with a pine bow?  None that I know of. 

I don’t know what kind of pine this except the label from menards saying it is “New Zealand Pine”.  Since I got back into bowmaking I have made a 51lb @ 26” pine longbow from this pine that performed exceptionally well.  Well enough I wouldn’t hesitate to hunt with it.  The bow was 70” nock to nock and had less than 1.375” of just unbraced set after shooting.

So I said what the heck let’s get some more of these boards while I’m stave shopping and set them aside.  Well I backed one board with some random blue non stretchy cloth I found in my attic.  Took my new harbor freight power hand planer and roughed out and floor tillered a bow in 5 minutes.  Used my farriers rasp and tillered this bow out to 50ish pounds @ 20” in a record 45 minutes.  I draw 23” to the corner of my mouth so I’m aiming for 55lb @ 23”.   

Surprisingly this New Zealand pine is quite elastic.  So far tillering it’s 66” n2n and drawing 20” and 50-55lb from the shadow of the porch light on the detached garage.  The  bow has taken less than 5/8” of set right after unbracing and returning to 1/8” follow after resting.  The last 3” of tillering I plan to take slowly.

Here it is at a 5.5” brace.  UPDATES coming soon with full draw and finished pictures

[Nasr]

That’s interesting. If it can bend and hold together you can hunt with it. I think the issue with pine is it needs to be much bigger compared to other “better” woods. Which in a hunting situation can have its problems( don’t know never hunted). So at 23 “ 66 is pretty long. How wide is it? Looking forward to the updates.

[Don W]

I just did a quick search for new Zealand pine. It has a pretty high SG for pine. It will be interesting to see how it turns out. I hope you can chronograph it!

[Jim Davis]

Tim Baker is known for, among other archery insights, making bows of lesser used woods. He recently presented one here https://leatherwall.bowsite.com/TF/lw/thread2.cfm?threadid=330698&category=88#5062689

[aznboi3644]

This bow is made from a 1.5” wide board.  It is surprisingly elastic.  I am currently adding tip overlays as the wood is soft and the string dents the wood in.  Tim’s bow took 3” of just unbraced set shooting around 39lb @ 26”. I am aiming for 50-55 @ 23”.  If it takes less than 1.5” of set I’ll be happy.  Currently it zips a 500 grain arrow with everything I have to draw it to 20”

[Selfbowman]

Congratulations on the bow . Built one years ago from Yellow pine mine was 2-1/2 inches wide though. 70” ntn. Growth rings easy to follow. Did you do your edge grain?

[aznboi3644]

Selfbowman this bow is made from a rift sawn board.  I always look down all sides of a board to carefully inspect the grain.  This one has straight lines down all sides. 

[aznboi3644]

Full brace and drawn to 20”.  It’s pretty heavy for me still.  Those last few inches are slow for me.  Trying to get the inner 1/3 bending a hair more

[Selfbowman]

Looking good.

[aznboi3644]

In the picture I didn’t flip the bow correctly.  The pictured top limb is actually the bottom limb.  It is very close to final tiller. 

[Hamish]

NZ pine, is an ironic title, as its actually native to USA, if its Monterey Pine/Radiata Pine.

Grown in massive softwood plantations in Australia and NZ. Quite a useful wood, pretty tough, but looked on as a poor man's wood due to the huge amounts of low quality factory furniture made from it.



As a kid, my Dad a forester in Australia who used to manage the Radiata pine plantations made my brothers and I some bows from green, osage saplings(he knew osage would make a better bow than pine). My friend wanted a bow because I had one, and his Dad made some bows from pine saplings. They worked quite well for a while until they dried out and broke.
The osage bows only got better as they dried out.

Anyways you're getting some success with it, so well done.

Have you tried heat treating it?

[aznboi3644]

Hamish I have heat treated a previous 35lb NZ jpine bow. It was 60” long and had 3” of set.  I heat treated it in reflex and it ended up with 1.5” of set after shooting.  I do plan to heat treat this bow before tillering the last few inches.  My experience is this pine takes to heat treat very well

[George Tsoukalas]

Many years ago I made a bow from Australian pine. It was a decent bow. A. pine  is not our white pine as it is much denser.  Nice tiller on that bow. Jawge

[aznboi3644]

Thanks Jawge.  Your website is the first website that got me into bowmaking years ago

[George Tsoukalas]

You are welcome. You just made my day! Jawge