Mahogany longbow making

[jojo]

The problem with the name Mahogany is that the :timber trade" now sell all sorts of different woods under the name. Some can be very good, dense & dark wood. Some can be a sort of pinkish pale colour, light and easy to work.

The dark wood, I would use to make a bow, and be reasonably confident that it would handle the compression well, but would back it with a veneer of hickory.
The pink, insipid stuff can be very soft and easily suffer from compression fractures and I probably would not bother.

I probably would make an American flatbow, with wider but thinner limbs rather than a longbow though. The wide limbs would handle the compression better than the longbow, because the sections of the limbs tends to be greater than the narrower longbow.

Anyway, it's all good fun and you learn a lot from making a bow, even if it eventually breaks. You could back it with brow craft paper and even that should it enough to prevent it from shattering, even if it does not prevent it from breaking.

 

[Staghound]

Thanks for the advise guys. This looks like true mahogany to me, dark red/brown close grained and quite dense. I've made up a stave using elm rather than hickory for the back (I figured that if elm is good enough for self bows it's worth a try) mainly because I had some thin elm handy and I'm too tight to spend any money on a rather dubious experiment. When the glue's dried I'll start shaping it and see how it goes. If it comes to anything I'll take some pictures of the process and post them later.

Steve

 

[Staghound]

Well so far so good. It needs some finishing still but it seems to have worked, although it's ended up pretty much 50/50 mahogany and elm.It worked out at just over 70" between nocks and It's not a heavy bow at 35 to 40 lbs @ 28" but that may go up a bit when i get a proper string for it. I've loosed about a dozen arrows so far at full draw with no damage or ominous noises, seems ok and hasn't followed the string too much 2 to 3" at most.

I'll try to get more pics together when the light is better.

Cheers
Steve

 

[fishfish]

ime impressed tha realy does look the biz!

 

[Staghound]

It works!

DRAW

LOOSE !

 

[Pignut]

i have some slats off an old bed. thjnk they are beech. would these work? what would be best for backing?

staghound yours is a real bute

 

[Staghound]

i have some slats off an old bed. thjnk they are beech. would these work? what would be best for backing?

staghound yours is a real bute

Cheers mate. Must admit I'm quietly chuffed with it.

I haven't tried it myself but I have read that beech is one of those woods, like ash and elm, that has often been used to make self bows from. As long as you've got a good, straight, knot free slat you should be able to treat it as you would ash and not need to back it with anything (unless you really want to of course)

There's a really basic guide to using beech here

http://www.ehow.com/how_2258606_make-bow-out-beech-wood.html