What is your Longbow made of ? (wood choices)

[kernowtom]

"Osage, Purpleheart,Wenge and Bamboo longbow"

That sounds much better - bamboo on the back and osage on the belly will be good - I have seen that before - Purple heart doesnt actually do much in a bow apart from look pretty but four laminations/ three glue lines add to stored energy so it should be fast.

Maple is a medium density wood - strong enough to back light belly woods - and lighter than hickory, so less weight in the limbs hence faster. Shame is it is such a pretty wood when you see it in a sheet, (birds eye and flame being a couple of patterns I think) but you don't see the figuring in a bow

Tom

[kernowtom]

Originally Posted by clickerati

switch the bamboo and maple for yew and YEW'VE got my l/b

i'm intrigued by the use of maple as it's one of my favourite woods.

Here is a pic of the laminations for interest, but one of the belly which i think shows off the purpleheart beautifully


tom

[kernowtom]

The images worked fine on preview! I will have to try again:-)

[kernowtom]

[clickerati]

A bit small, but I get the idea! Very pretty!!

[kernowtom]

indeed - the photo has got resized on its journey! It started out full screen. I will try to get the original onto a post...
tom

[ThePinkOne]

I'm interested in the use of bamboo. My dream is a long-bow made using Madake bamboo.....

I'll explain.

My other "hobby" is Kendo, i.e. Japanese sword-fencing where the "sword" (shinai) is made from 4 bamboo slats. It has to be tough and also flexible to spring back (and not shatter) from repeated strikes.

One thing I learned from this is that the types of bamboo for decent shinais are specific- actually first thing I learned is that there's more than one type of timber bamboo. The one we usually see in big pieces in the west is "moso" bamboo (Phyllostachys heterocycla f. pubescens)- it's widely grown in China for timber and edible shoots. However, this bamboo is never used for shinais or indeed for the Japanese Yumi bows- it's regarded as far too brittle and prone to splintering.

The bamboo used for shinais and bows is "madake" (Phyllostachys bambusoides). However, although widely available in Japan (and China too for that matter) it isn't (so far as I can tell- and I have looked) specifically available in the west as large dried culms. Although if you buy a madake shinai or course you have 4 slats you could back a bow with (you'd have to splice 2 slats in the handle to get a length).

The lesson here I think is that in the same way as different tree-woods have different properties for bow-making, so do different bamboos.

That's why I would like to try a madake-backed longbow and one day if I pancake too many madake shinais and end up with a couple of spare slats I probably will. If the "inferior" moso bamboo is good for backing bows, it would be interesting to see the difference using the madake bamboo used by those who have been growing lots of different bamboos for over a thousand years! I have also managed to acquire a madake bamboo offset which is growing in my garden but it will be many years before it matures to culm width for use- there's only two or three mature plants of madake in the UK, as this is the species and the smaller cultivars of p. bambusoides (such as "Castilon") are far more commonly grown over here.

Sorry if that's a bit anoraky, but when I discovered the world of timber bamboos (i.e. the Phyllostachys genus) I was fascinated..... so much more to learn and try!

P.

[clickerati]

Originally Posted by kernowtom

indeed - the photo has got resized on its journey! It started out full screen. I will try to get the original onto a post...
tom

How's this?



mmmmmmm purpleheart!!!

[kernowtom]

Glad you like the pic of my belly clicki:-)
As far as shinai are concerned I just had a look at one of mine. Although they are made of madake, I think you might struggle in terms of radius of curvature and width. The nodes are also quite close together which won't help.
tom

[ThePinkOne]

Originally Posted by kernowtom

Glad you like the pic of my belly clicki:-)
As far as shinai are concerned I just had a look at one of mine. Although they are made of madake, I think you might struggle in terms of radius of curvature and width. The nodes are also quite close together which won't help.
tom

Depends on how long and wide the longbow is..... for those of us who want a lighter draw-weight and have a shorter DL I reckon it's do-able. I just canot bring myself to use a good shinai to try it, so it'll have to wait for enough breakage...

What dojo you with BTW?

P.