Input needed on Sapwood Osage Bow

[Ward]

Needing some input on Sapwood Osage Bow I am working on (my first).  Plan is to make it 58" nock to nock and if I am lucky 60# @ 28".  My main question is whether or not I need to take the sapwood down closer to the heartwood, or do I leave it as it is at approximately 1/2" thickness.  I am worried that by the time I get to the limb tips that I will not have enough heartwood left for strength.

[Ghost Dog]

I just received an osage selfbow from John Strunk with a full sapwood back. The sapwood pulled the stave into 3" plus of reflex, because it dried faster than the heartwood. Pretty wild to shoot.

Looking at the tips there is about 25% sapwood to heartwood. I cannot tell you how much sapwood to heartwood there is on the rest of the limb, because the sapwood wraps all around the back of the bow to the edge of the limb, as it describes the shape of the osage sapling.

[George Tsoukalas]

Always a good idea to remove the sapwood if you have enough heartwood. Jawge

[George Tsoukalas]

With black locust the closer you can get to the heartwood the better.I imagine its the same with osage. Jawge

[Pat B]

I've just recently finished an osage bow with about half/half sapwood/heartwood.It is 60" long, about 1 3/8" at the fades and tapers to 3/8" tips that are slightly recurved and static. Because I wanted the cross section more oval I rounded the back and belly. Rings were violated and pin knot clusters were rounded off so I added a thin deer rawhide backing. For some odd reason, this bow has more physical weight than similar all heartwood osage bows I've made. It is a good hard shooter and pulls 57#@26".
I'm not able to post pics here(too dumb) but you can see pics on Primitive Archer or I can e-mail them to you. I added some leopard skin print tissue paper to the back for design sake.     Pat

[rocdoc]

As long as the sapwood is "sound", no bugs, no serious checking, it can be left in it's "whole" state.  I just finished a 56" ntn sapwood bow.  I removed the bark when I cut the wood and applied several coats of shelac. With the radiussed belly profile that I prefer, there is a "strip" of hardwood down the entire length of the bow with about 1/4" of sapwood showing on the belly edges.  The stave started out straight and pulled into 4" of reflex as it cured.  It now holds 2" of that reflex after being shot about 100 times.....it is a light weight bow though, only pulling 40#'s at 26" (true draw).  I put a bull snake skin on the back and plan on using it for hunting turkeys out of my pop-up.

[Ghost Dog]

Hey Doug, that bow sounds a lot like the bow John made for me, reflex and all, except mine is 62". It has so much reflex it almost looks like it is strung. Carumba!

[Ward]

Thanks for the help everyone!  Had the fortunate chance to see Tim Otts sapwood bows at OJAM (The ones on the cover of this months Traditional Archer magazine)this year here in Oklahoma and I had to have one.  The tree I got this stave from is about 6" in diameter and the back would be rounded to the point of de-crowning if I took the sapwood off.  I think I got my answer, the sapwood is full of small knots and pins so I think a strip of Rawhide backing is called for.