Rowan bow

[andywinkk]

does anyone have any info on making long bows out of rowan, ie is it any good what sort of thiknes do i need ect bla bla bla,

any help would be good, i would use yew but dont know were there is any,

i can get my hands on some rowan so this is why i ask ?

Thanks Andy

 

[robin wood]

I would expect Rowan to make an excellent bow, I have used a rowan pole for my pole lathe and it has provided en excellent return spring for several years. There were some very good tips on bowmaking recently on here if you use the search. i think the thread was maybe "elm bow"

Ah here it is

http://www.bushcraftuk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=29384&highlight=elm+bow

 

[jojo]

I have read in a couple of occasions that Rowan was used in the Middles Ages to make longbows, as a substitute for Yew. No proof, but it's worth having a go!

 

[shaggystu]

i've been making a bow from rowan for over a year now (i'm a little slow) and it's a lovely wood to work with, can't really give you any specifics cos i don't have any. not a longbow tho, more of a plains indians inspired flat bow. one of the reasons i chose rowan was that mr mears recommends it as an ideal wood for a first bow in one of his books.

cheers

stuart

 

[dwardo]

I believe its a good wood to use for bow making, atleast acording to a quick search over on paleoplant. I have also been keeping my eyes out for a nice rowan stave. The wood is meant to be a little bit better than ash plus all the rowan i see knocking about is nice and straight growing.

Let us know.

 

[Robbo]

Rowan usually does grow straight but buts prone to twisting, I split out some bow stave years ago from a nice straight tree but they would have made better propellers.

Andy

Has a smell not dissimilar from cat pee IIRC .

 

[Legend]

Wellllll, the only wood available to me is pine, and ANYTHING is better than pine!

The safest design to go with for a bow is Flatbow. With the pine I make it 2" wide and use a 'board' about 0.8"" thick. I cut off the excess wood in the length and glue a 10" section to the middle to make the solid handle (shape it once finished. I make it a thick handle because if I cut into the 0.8" bow to make the handle it'd probably snap)

I taper it from 0.8" at the start of the handle to 1/4" at the very tip. I taper the back&belly (looking down on the bow) starting from 16" away from the tip to 1/2" at the tip.

Obviously this is nothing like a Yew longbow, but the longbow design would fail miserablely with pine.

Hope this helps... You can find a bowyering tutorial on the internet and combine these dimensions with their techniques.

Good luck!