mullet - I truly appreciate what you said in your post and thank you so much for bringing a sense of reality to what has long been accepted as a collector's perspective among old collector friends of mine.
I am not a bowyer but have great admiration for those who are. I also understand that lemonwood is hard to come by today so can empathize with you or anyone who is saddened by old lemonwood bows not being reworked as bow wood.
Have often thought of the possibility of reworking these old bows into new bows as you have done, but not being a bowyer, these have only been thoughts. Quite frankly, I did not realize that anyone was actually re-working these old lemonwood bows. There is much for all of us to learn on these threads.
When you find an old lemonwood bow that has taken a lot of set, do you attempt to take the set out? If so, what method do you use, heat gun, steam, boiling, etc? Do you ever back any of these lemonwood bows to increase the draw weight?
Do you rework old self bows made of other woods such as osage or hickory?
Have always thought it unusual that perhaps the greatest 1800s English-born-immigrated-to-America bowman/bowyer of all time, James Duff, considered lemonwood the ideal bow wood.
Topic: The Bow Collectors' Tomato Stakes (Read 1168 times)
