Best Kind Of Wood To Make A Longbow

Recurve bows can be made of several different woods including hickory yew osage orange and lemon wood.

Best kind of wood to make a longbow.

Softer woods to avoid would be aspen cottonwood poplar balsa and pine. The best wood for making a longbow. You can also use wood like hickory white ash green ash black cherry but oak is just fine. The wood must be able to bend without breaking.

Yew is the only non hardwood that is suitable for creating bows and it is one of the best. These bows are usually made from just one shaft. Bamboo is very strong in tinsel strength so it needs to be very thin to avoid overpowering the belly wood. Measuring gluing and cutting this video goes through the main part of taking a 1 x 2 and making it start to look like a bow.

Two important characteristics determine the suitability of wood for bow making. Pacific yew is extremely strong under compression and sam harper of poor folk bows calls osage the ideal bow wood. Ash is another well known bow wood from history but like wych elm it made a far better broad limbed flat bow than a d section longbow. Yew very popular for centuries throughout europe this lightweight wood is good for simple short lived bows with a light draw weight.

Yew is typically regarded as the best wood for making longbows. The two most commonly used bow woods are pacific yew and osage orange. However as individual bowyers have their own preferences some choose to make longbows from white oak red oak hickory red elm american elm osage orange or rock maple instead. Some woods that are good with raw bamboo backing include osage yew ipe and bamboo because they can withstand the compression forces.

Ash is a ring porous hardwood and the early growth wood is coarse and stringy with the late growth wood being harder and stronger. Types of wood for bow making recurve bows. It makes a great backing to almost any kind of bow. Yew is good for beginners because it usually has fewer knots.

Elm creates short stout bows with thick limbs. You want the wood you choose for the stave to be no thicker than 2 inches woods that are best used for the stave include maple yew ash or hickory. In terms of looking at the raw mechanical data of woods the best bow woods tend to be those that have a low moe and a high mor.