osage orange

[rasta979]

If your going the fence/hedge route its key with any living fence that the ole trimming of the hedges has to happen to maintain control. In this case the "trimmer" is my 310 Stihl Make a slurry of the seed balls and water, shallow trench the fence line, pour slurry down trench, lightly cover with soil and wait...end of 1st year begining of 2nd bend tops over and bury in the soil weaving them into each other...tops will root and new shoots will grow up from the now horizontal sapling. Its a labor intensive fence but dog gone effective. Best of luck!

 

[Daniel]

I have looking into make recurve bows. Osage Orange is one of the woods recommended for making them. Other woods suggested are Oak, hickory, mahogany and Maple. all the above have to be nice defect free tight grained etc.
Since the Osage Is mainly used as an additional piece for the back of the bow it will be supported by the wood in the main body. I was wondering if someone woudl be willing to cut a piece and ship it to me. I will pay all shipping cost of box etc.
I want to make 5 bows total and each bow woudl require two 3 foot long pieces about 2-3 inches wide and maybe 3/4 inch thick or less. IF you send a raw log remember much of the wood is lost when getting cut into boards. otherwise I have the ability to resaw logs up to 10 inch diameter or so. This would actually work best if a 3 foot section of log was sent so I can cut the wood with the grain in the direction I need it.

Anyway I appreciate any help. any of the other woods on the list or that you know make good bows would be appreciated also.

 

[Jitterbugdude]

Hey Daniel, I do not have any Osage Orange for you ( the neighbor's would get mad if I cut theirs!) but.. I would love it if you could show how you make your bow. One of those things I want to eventually do!

Randy B

 

[Daniel]

Randy, I will try to keep an update as progress. It will be a very long process though. I mainly googled "How to make a recurve bow" for the step by step. I have other info I have gathered over the years concerning wood in general. how the grain should run so you do not get twist when bending etc. how to press and steam wood to bend it that sort of thing. It is not really that hard to do once you know how. The main bow specific skill is tillering. that is getting the bow to the lbs of pull you want and keeping both sides bending smoothly and evenly with no twist. You can break a new bow easily during this stage.

 

[SmokesAhoy]

There are some good youtube tutorials too. And like daniel said that last step can be long and painstaking. I've wanted to make an osage bow too they can be very nice. Ash and yew are popular woods in british bows

 

[BarG]

I've got volume 1-2 and three of "THE TRADITIONAL BOYERS BIBLE" I highly recommend all three. Osage orange is highly regarded for traditional bows. These books literaly walk you through step by step of making your own bow, strings,different types of backing, arrow making......as well as insight from some of the best authers on the subject of learning to shoot. I read a particular paper back written by, G. Fred Asbell titled Instinctive shooting If I recall, And learned everything I'd been doing wrong. Talk about immediate inprovement.
I may need to add this to my tobacco sportsman group