to degrease or not to degrease?

[Hermann From Bavaria]

hey guys!

i´m planning a new recurve (bingham form) with 2 osage layers.
in conversations with my german bowyer-friends my brain was flooded with thousands of different opinions.
the one says "degrease that osage thoroughly"
the other says "dont degrease it at all, or the delamination risk is much more higher"

whats the truth?
i built several selfbows in osage, but never a glass recurve...
please help!

greets
herm

[frank bullitt]

Personally, Herman I would at least wipe down with Acetone before glue up. On any wood for that matter.

Now , I have never did a glass backed bow, but have done a few sinew backed. I did have one where the sinew lifted off in one piece the full length of the limb! I cleaned with lye and re-glued.

That's my experience!

[Swissbow]

Hi Herman,
on my bow for the trade I just wiped everything with acetone to make sure that all the lams where free of dust. After that the glue up went nice and without any problems.

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Andy

[jsweka]

About a year ago I made my brother-in-law a laminated longbow with osage limbs.  I didn't degrease with anything and it's still holding up. But if it makes you feel better, go ahead and wipe them down with acetone - couldn't hurt.

[John Cooper]

I hate working with Acetone.  Would denatured alcohol work just as well?

[John Scifres]

I wouldn't bother with it.  Osage is full of oil and there is a train of thought that degreasing simply draws more oil out.  That makes as much sense as anything to me.  I have glued up a bunch of backed osage composite bows, even one osage backed osage, and never degreased them.

[Roy from Pa]

Have worked with Osage for 10 years now. Never even gave it a thought about the oil in the wood. And never had a glue joint come apart.

[Gundog68]

Hi Hermann,

i use acetone as mentioned before. For wood like cocobolo (very oily) i do this 2-3 times. Also i use a hacksaw blade to make some groves for the parts where it can be necessary to have more contact faces. (Under the tips, as example).

Gundog

[Hermann From Bavaria]

ok guys, thank you for your thoughts.
i think i have to build 2 recurves. one with degreased lams, one without    

thank you,
greets
herm

[yamapup]

Back in the 90s I made some osage self bows and used lye to degrease when I planned to sinew them. The water was golden yellow when I rinsed them off. When the wood dried the osage was a pale yellow and I never had a problem with the sinew.  I would definitely degrease when using osage. Pup