Why Osage?

[Osagetree]

Osage,,, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

[Paul/KS]

I tend to go the slow route with my logs too.Got one halved in the barn that I need to quarter then I let them rest.I don't like to rush the wood,took it a while to get big enough to cut down ya know...
Osage is just the neatest wood to work with and it is kinda fun to show a farmer what a fella can make out of that #@%!! hedge...  

[Eric Krewson]

Back in my osage cutting frenzy days I would always take one of my bows with me when asking permission to cut osage or pull it out of a bulldozed brush pile. After the landowner saw my bow they always said "you are welcome to what ever you want".

[dannyvp]

Does it need to be in the barn to dry  or on saw horses behind it?

[Flesner]

I don't think it matters all that much. I dry mine outside under an overhang. Just keep it off the ground.

I've put staves in the basement of my house to dry, also. Doesn't seem to matter.

Remember, people used to build them using rocks for tools. It's not all that complicated. Osage is hard to destroy as long as you seal it good and keep the bugs out of it.

Like gwhunter said, this ain't gonna' be the last one you build!  

[Keystone]

Every good hunting bow I have made has been out of osage. The white woods just don't shoot as well for me.

[dannyvp]

Well what do i need to get started besides a hunk of wood? I better start planning now.

[dannyvp]

Well ive been looking around. Do i need to buy the Hunting the osage bow book, or the traditional bible 1? Any of you that have been doing this a while have any tools and stuff i may need laying around?

[Eric Krewson]

Buy the hunting the osage bow book, the TBB1 is not necessary. Draw knife, half a pair of scissors to scrape, a good aggressive rasp(buy a 10" or 12" you can put a handle on not a four in one) , half round course Nicholson and a chain saw file for the nocks an you are good to go.

[Ron LaClair]

I love hearing about this but then why didnt Howard Hill go with Osage .Why did he end up with split bamboo and finally having that glassed?If Osage was that good I would have thought he'd use that and glass it as well.Bamboo must have something important over the other woods?  

Howard shot a lot of Osage bows but like everyone else he was looking to build a better mouse trap    :rolleyes:  The concave Tonkin Cane Bamboo that Howard imported from Japan, he tempered like the bamboo Fly Rods to give the "wood"? more action. I wonder if he ever got a patent on the process.   ....      

 Howard didn't glass his bamboo bows until the 50's when everyone else started using glass on their bows.

Osage seems to work best on it's own, without being laminated and without fiberglass. I have known Osage bowyers that can look at an Osage tree and actually see the bows that are trapped inside.    

[Ron LaClair]

Osage has Soul      

Here's a story about a particular Osage bow that I have. Sometime back in the early 1980's I heard of an old bowyer in Indiana that had a lot of bow wood. I looked him up and went to see him. Long story short, I bought several staves from him. One was an exceptional piece that was long enough to make a bow around 66" and as straight as could be with exceptional grain. The story was that he had cut that particular stave nearly 50 years earlier and had sealed the ends and stored it in the upstairs of his house. I bought the one piece stave from him for the staggering price of $20.00.

Fast forward 10 years when Ron Hardcastle from Texas came to my shop one day. He saw the stave which I hadn't had the time (or nerve) to cut into, admired it, said it was a fine looking piece of wood and that it should be made into a bow. I agreed with him and told him to take it home and do just that.

A couple months later he called with the news that the bow was finished, it came out 60#@27" and it was the best bow he had ever made.  Then he told me he was going to send it back to me and that I was to put the finish on it. He also said I should give it a good name and maybe a little poem written on the limb.

I named the bow   Sleeping Beauty and this is the poem that is written on the lower limb

  Fifty years as a stave I slept

  My fate uncertain, my promise unkept

  For love of beauty and days of old,

  A Bowyer came forth with hands so bold

  He finished the task, he set me free

  To be the bow I was meant to be

[dannyvp]

Very cool Ron.
He should be proud and honored.

Im sitting here drawing up a bow horse in SolidWorks. Talk about Primitive.  

[Tim Fishell]

Nothing more Primitive than a 3-D modeled bow horse!!

[dannyvp]

Well im having some problems with the bow horse.
I found a document by Tim Flood and im starting with that. I just cant tell how some of the pieces go together.
 

Look at this and please explain it.

[Jason Lester]

Danny,
   Basicaly this is a big foot operated clamp. The blue part is nothing more than a ramp to rest the stave on at any angle you like. Looks like it could be made adjustable to me. The red/pink part is the lever/clamp you push on it wiht your foot to tighten up on the stave. The piviot is where the clamp goes threw the blue part I believe. The rest is just a bench.  Hope that helps.

I wanted to build one of these but found building a plain bench and clamping a vise to it works OK too. You may get started easier with that route.

Good luck.

[dannyvp]

I like the idea of a bow horse for camp, seems pretty neat. I'll start a new thread for it.