What is your Longbow made of ? (wood choices)

[Dreadnaught]

Hi

I would recommend getting the bow made with the purpleheart and osage
as core laminates . I know osage as a belly would be very beautiful
with its colour mellowing from a bright lemon through rich golds to a
deep chestnut colour after some years, but, for performance, I have
come to the conclusion the more lamenates you have the less a bow will
weaken in the heat. At a County match in 2006 on a blisteringly hot
day about 35/36 degrees I took my bow scales and checked the poundage
of my bow. My 62LB hickory, purpleheart, bubinga, lemonwood lemonwood
bow weakened at the height of the day to only 60 1/2 LB. Several other
archers used the scales and their bows went down by anything upto 10LBS
of what they said was normal, the worst of these bows had two and three
laminates. My wifes bow, a hickory, goncolo-alves, maple, goncolo-alves
lemonwood only went down from 50LB to 49 1/2 LBS. I think your choice
of purpleheart to go with osage in the middle would be very good, From
an asthetic point of view it will always contrast nicely with the
osage. If you chose greenheart(incidently the only two bows I have ever
had break were greenheart cored) bubinga or goncolo-alves, when the
osage matured a bit you might not easily see them as seperate woods
unless looking closely.
I hope you find these thoughts interesting and useful.
Best regards
Dreadnaught

[Et tu brute]

Thanks guys i'll probably go for one with a lemonwood belly, mainly because I don't have enough money at the minute! Plenty of tieme to decide though. Intresting thoughts on the poundage change dreadnaught, the place I may be getting the bow from doesn't offer greenheart as a core, so that would solve one problem

cheers,
Dave

[jaarus]

Not sure where you are thinking of getting your bow from Et tu brute but I would suggest you check out Yew Tree Archery if you havent already and have a blast with their bow designer (great fun trying out all the combinations and if you go as far as ordering from them they will contact you to double check what you want and offer better wood choices etc so you cant buy a bad bow choice by pressing the wrong box on the form!)

When i was looking around they were very favourably priced (you will probably find you can get a lot more bow for your money compared to with other bowyers - yet the quality is first rate) and the bow I have from them is absolutely lovely.
Its a 50lb Hickory backed Osage with a Purpleheart core. Its fast and stable and I love it.

Others from the forum have used them as well - all positive comments, the chap I dealt with was very helpful and patient with me considering it was my first Longbow.

Really cant praise them enough!

[Fugue]

It doesn't get out very often, but here is my hickory back, santos rosewood Bickerstaffe longbow.

[Et tu brute]

Originally Posted by jaarus

Not sure where you are thinking of getting your bow from Et tu brute but I would suggest you check out Yew Tree Archery if you havent already and have a blast with their bow designer (great fun trying out all the combinations and if you go as far as ordering from them they will contact you to double check what you want and offer better wood choices etc so you cant buy a bad bow choice by pressing the wrong box on the form!)

When i was looking around they were very favourably priced (you will probably find you can get a lot more bow for your money compared to with other bowyers - yet the quality is first rate) and the bow I have from them is absolutely lovely.
Its a 50lb Hickory backed Osage with a Purpleheart core. Its fast and stable and I love it.

Others from the forum have used them as well - all positive comments, the chap I dealt with was very helpful and patient with me considering it was my first Longbow.

Really cant praise them enough!

Hi Jaarus, Yew Tree Archery is one of the places i'm looking at, and like you say, the prices are fantastic! If I choose to get one from there i'll definatley give them a call before ordering, because to be honest I don't really know enough to be completley comfortable ordering without any advice from thee bowyer. The bow designer is very cool, i've never seen anything like it before, very useful as you also get the idea of what your bow'll look like aswell

[dave_t_aber]

Someone early on mentioned that Bamboo is expensive? I gather you mean that to buy a longbow backed with bamboo is expensive? I say this as I got 5 x 2 metre lengths of 55mm diameter bamboo for £35 including delivery from uk-bamboo-supplies.com or a site of a similar name.

I got enough bamboo for backing 10 bows with this, but really i should have paid a extra £10 and got the 80mm diameter bamboo, in which the backing would be less crowned, but its passable i think.

you can get ordinary type, or a black mottled type, which i should have got, as it looks very classy.

I guess you could have the worry that it may not be straight, but all the poles i got were useable.

im currently tillering my first bamboo and lemonwood longbow, and the bamboo does add alot of strength, so i guess the limb weight may turn out to be lower than in a self bow, so hopefully arrow speed should be higher.

im enjoying working with the bamboo though, its all a learning curve.

[NoWay]

I have an order for a 60lb @31" bamboo backed osage bow at Yew Tree Archery at the moment. They made me a couple of bows for my sons which I liked so much I decided I had to get them to make one for me! My excuse was that I need a bow of less then 70lbs so that I can join in BLBS shoots.

[steve58]

Originally Posted by djthompson

osage is as tough as old nails - go with that; backed with hickory.

Rgds, Dave

Maybe so, but my bow was barely a year old when it developed some nasty cracking on the lower limb and about 1" above the grip on the osage belly. Mr Bickerstaffe fixed it, but a worry even so. If I had the money I would go top YewTree for something with a bamboo backing, probably osage in the core and yew on the belly.

[teddybear]

mine is just common ass, im new what i will be doing later on is looking at a point in time of long bow and seeing wich is eazy for me what trees were knowen then and having 1 made out of that im a forester i wont 1 as close to how they were made as possebal. yes im sad i now lots of lattin names for trees lol some are funny

[steve58]

Originally Posted by Dreadnaught

Hi

I would recommend getting the bow made with the purpleheart and osage
as core laminates . I know osage as a belly would be very beautiful
with its colour mellowing from a bright lemon through rich golds to a
deep chestnut colour after some years, but, for performance, I have
come to the conclusion the more lamenates you have the less a bow will
weaken in the heat. At a County match in 2006 on a blisteringly hot
day about 35/36 degrees I took my bow scales and checked the poundage
of my bow. My 62LB hickory, purpleheart, bubinga, lemonwood lemonwood
bow weakened at the height of the day to only 60 1/2 LB. Several other
archers used the scales and their bows went down by anything upto 10LBS
of what they said was normal, the worst of these bows had two and three
laminates. My wifes bow, a hickory, goncolo-alves, maple, goncolo-alves
lemonwood only went down from 50LB to 49 1/2 LBS. I think your choice
of purpleheart to go with osage in the middle would be very good, From
an asthetic point of view it will always contrast nicely with the
osage. If you chose greenheart(incidently the only two bows I have ever
had break were greenheart cored) bubinga or goncolo-alves, when the
osage matured a bit you might not easily see them as seperate woods
unless looking closely.
I hope you find these thoughts interesting and useful.
Best regards
Dreadnaught

Very interesting. The common feature of the two bows you describe seems to be lemon wood on the belly? I was thinking of bamboo backing, osage core, lemonwood belly. Why would 4 laminate bows be more stable in hot conditions? Incidentally my own bow is a 4 laminate one and definitely weakens in the heat, sometimes I have to move the rubber band as much as half an inch to compensate, could always be me weakening in the heat I suppose!