BOWS FROM BOARDS

Tim Baker

Consider this quote: "Kiln dried-wood is brittle and will NOT make a bow...[it] was responsible for many of my early bow failures."— Bows and Arrows of the Native Americans, by yes, our own Jim Hamm.

Many archery luminaries of past and present report similar experiences. The next several pages could easily be filled with sad accounts of failed lumber bows. Its easy to see why the you-can't-make-bows-from-boards rumor got started.

But bows made from kiln-dried lumberyard boards can be as efficient and durable as bows made from air-dried staves, and often more so. And on the face of it, why shouldn't they? After all, kiln-dried wood is wood] And in fact, kiln-dried wood is air dried!

But the final, definitive reason kiln-dried boards will make safe, efficient bows is this:

Even if a kiln-dried board suffered all the damage it is sometimes alleged to have suffered, this board would still have some strength, and some flexibility.

It would be weaker and less elastic wood, but this is no obstacle to us. We now know how to make safe, efficient bows from "inferior" wood. Make the limbs wider!

If a hypothetical kiln-degraded stave of heavier rock maple descended to the energy-storage capacity of lighter red oak, for example, what have we lost? Only this: we would have the same weight bow but about 15% more limb mass, resulting in about 3 fps slower cast. This reduction in cast, incidentally, would be canceled out by the superior performance of the rectangular cross-section.

But it's unlikely you will encounter this weaker-per-mass board. In practice, a stave is no more likely to be degraded during its pampered, controlled visit to a modern kiln than by typical air-drying.

A phone call or so ago Jim off-handedly mentioned the latest bow he'd made: a 70 lb maple longbow... from a kiln-dried board. He now visibly winces when reminded of that anti-board passage, wishing he could reach back in time and hit the delete button.

In early editions of The Bent Stick, Paul Comstock presented "Ten Commandments For Your First Wooden Bow," commandment number four being, "Thou shalt not use Kiln-dried wood." Comstock apparently has taken another walk up the mountain, for later editions list "Nine Commandments."

Manuel Lizarralde shoots a maple workhorse which has cast thousands of arrows, enough to have worn out seven strings. Typical of other properly made board bows, it shows no more set or strain than when new. All evidence shows that bows made from any of the available kiln-dried hardwoods equal the performance and durability of tree-split counterparts.

Both Hamm and Comstock insisted their conversions be reported here. Like most post-fiberglass woodbow makers they want the straight dope to get out, deriving more satisfaction from the rough and tumble exchange of information and experience than the false safety of dogma. A very different attitude from that of close-to-the-vest pre-fiberglass bowmakers and archers. One possible reason for this is that today's woodbow makers are largely hunters and not target shooters. True hunting, after all, requires analytical, skeptical thinking, and being open to new directions.

We are currently part of a woodbow renaissance. Imperfect conventions are being exposed to fresh air and sunlight. But one still wonders how anti-kiln dried rumors survived so long. Here are some possible reasons:

•  As with other archery misinformation, one writer honestly reports a prevailing belief, and subsequent writers use this first report as a reference.

•  Cause and prevention of internal cell collapse during kiln-drying was not well understood in the past.

•  Kiln-dried staves are most often used by beginners, and beginners break bows.

•  Virtually all kiln-dried wood is in board form. Unlike unmilled trees, board surfaces seldom parallel growth rings. Internal wood fibers and the weak, porous early growth ring approaches the bow's back at some angle. When

From an improperly selected, improperly prepared board, this limb was destined to fail. When making bows from tree-split staves, conforming to the peculiarities of the stave is half the skill. When making bows from boards, learning to read wood fiber is half the skill.

Stressed, these porous rings and severed wood fibers are no longer being pulled longitudinally, the direction of wood's greatest strength. Instead they are literally peeled apart.

Over the last few years I have made approximately 350 bows from kiln-dried lumber. None of the last 250 broke, or even took a large set. And their performance is indistinguishable from same-design conventionally-cured staves. For reasons explained in detail farther on, 1 have come to prefer lumber staves.

Because of the momentum of dogma, many cannot easily accept the equality of board and tree-split staves. In the beginning I felt the same. Part of the motive for developing the Standard Wood Bending Test (p. 100, Vol. 1) was to discover how inferior kiln-dried lumber was. When the tests instead began extolling boards staves, I doubted the test. Even after validating it with prediction-verifying lumber bows, I still felt uneasy.

Learning that other bowmakers have had good results with lumber staves relieved much of the unease. Professional bowyer Ron Hardcastle in Texas, Ben Walker in Canada, and others, have used lumber staves for years. In addition to his conventional staves and bows, Ron has begun supplying edge and bias-ringed staves and finished bows of hickory and maple. Due to their more rectangular cross-sections, both generally out-perform conventional staves.

BUT WHY USE BOARD STAVES?

Safe, efficient bows can be made from boards. But so what? Excellent bows have been made from split staves for millennia. Why change now?

There is no reason to change. Conventional staves will always likely be the best choice for most bowmakers. Board staves merely expand options.

For some, however, lumberyard staves can make the difference between having a bow and not having a bow.

Consider the following:

—  You can have a bow today! If your bow breaks, or if one morning you suddenly get the impulse to make a bow, you can do so, and be hunting with it that afternoon.

—  Even the less-expensive white-wood stave suppliers charge five to ten times the average price of a board stave. Board staves are an inexpensive way to learn the craft.

—  If you live in a bowwood desert. Trees grow best in the summer. So when does it rain in California? In the winter! California is called the Golden State because of its rolling hills of dead summer grass. This state, especially my part of it, has endless vistas of no trees. Local oaks, with their drought-thin growth rings, could have been used, but straight staves of good length are rare. Bay Area Indians, it appears, largely acquired their bows by trade with Sierra Miwoks.

I was once bemoaning this local dearth of bowwood to Paul Comstock. His return letter enclosed a 3" by 5" photo of an Eastern country road. The road had been cut through a forest. A wall of tall, straight, massive hardwood trees filled the picture. On the back of the photo Comstock had written, "See any bow wood here?"

Most of the North American hardwoods have been planted locally, but they're in yards and parks. I won't say how many times I've acquired staves by acts resting between larceny and a bad pruning job. That is, before discovering lumber staves.