Hi all
Finally got Adam's book in the post. It's fantastic.
I have one major problem.... I live in Africa and of course there is no maple here. Much of Africa has been over run with exotic wood but for some reason maple isn't one of them. I can of course get kiln-dried wood. There are thousands of trees here of course but I have no idea which would be suitable and may take years to sift through them. For a three piece construction I of course require green wood to bend 18mm siyahs!
So must wood be diffuse-porous? If not a suitable wood for me would be chinaberry or celtis africana. Has anybody used sycamore trees e.g. London plain tree?
Regards
Jonathan
Core wood turkish bow
-
Feather
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:14 pm
- Location: Johannesburg
-
suomialex
- Posts: 6
- Joined: Thu May 24, 2012 7:58 pm
- Location: Helsinki, Finland
Hi,
As a complete novice working on my first hornbow this is just educated guessing and should be taken as that. I also live in Finland and have not been in South Africa so my knowledge is based on geography books and wine drinking.
Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) belongs to the species of maple and should be as good to use as any maple tree. Good straight trunk with thick growth rings is best to work with, at least with selfbows and sinew backs so the wood I?m trying my hornbow with is like this but the wood is Acer platanoides.
Maybe you could find good wood at the south coast where the climate is more close to the Southern Europe as I understand.
As a complete novice working on my first hornbow this is just educated guessing and should be taken as that. I also live in Finland and have not been in South Africa so my knowledge is based on geography books and wine drinking.
Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) belongs to the species of maple and should be as good to use as any maple tree. Good straight trunk with thick growth rings is best to work with, at least with selfbows and sinew backs so the wood I?m trying my hornbow with is like this but the wood is Acer platanoides.
Maybe you could find good wood at the south coast where the climate is more close to the Southern Europe as I understand.
-
Feather
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:14 pm
- Location: Johannesburg
Dear Suomialex
Thanks! Yeah I'm sure there must be many woods in africa suitable for composite bow making. We have wood that weigh from 1.24SG (Dalbergia melanoxylan) to the lightest of wood. I will certainly make it my mission to test many of these woods for self bows but it's not worth the time testing them for composites.
As I understand it, ring porous woods are difficult to process in terms of making groves.
The only possible problem with the plane tree is that the density is rather low (0.47).
Regards
Jonathan
Thanks! Yeah I'm sure there must be many woods in africa suitable for composite bow making. We have wood that weigh from 1.24SG (Dalbergia melanoxylan) to the lightest of wood. I will certainly make it my mission to test many of these woods for self bows but it's not worth the time testing them for composites.
As I understand it, ring porous woods are difficult to process in terms of making groves.
The only possible problem with the plane tree is that the density is rather low (0.47).
Regards
Jonathan
-
mikekeswick
- Posts: 404
- Joined: Tue May 05, 2009 11:01 am
- Location: Durham,Engalnd
If you can get sycamore then that would be my first choice.
You want diffuse porous, density of around 0.55 - 0.65 ideally,non-oily and hopefully quite porous to help with gluing properties.
Good luck! I wish I had access to some of your African trees....I use blackwood for tip overlays etc on wood bows but a selfbow from it would be amazing!
You want diffuse porous, density of around 0.55 - 0.65 ideally,non-oily and hopefully quite porous to help with gluing properties.
Good luck! I wish I had access to some of your African trees....I use blackwood for tip overlays etc on wood bows but a selfbow from it would be amazing!