Originally posted by razorback:
Damded ugly bow. You should send it to me for proper disposal. 
I love the look of cherry, one of my favorites. When working it did you have any problems with chattering in the wood. I have often had that when using it for other woodworking projects.
With cherry's wavy grainwhat is the best orientation of the board to get one without grain runouts like those. A little scarry but sweet looking.
That's ok Razor, I got a fire going that'll eat that bow up right now! I'll make sure she gets disposed of properly.
Here's the thing I learned about cherry in this particular experiment: It's not oak. lol
With that said, here's some more detail. I noticed, when you are working oak, or other woods that have somewhat of an open grain, and you have runoff, you're going to get upset cause that bow WILL peel it's runoffs during tillering, the tiny sections of open grain between the ring you're working and the edge leave the grain no chance of surviving the stresses you're putting on it.
But cherry is far different. VERY uniform in density, regardless of the grain. Take a look and you'll see what I mean. The oak's grain is porous, and the grain also looks hairy, not solid like the cherry's.
The riser shown here is from what has to be the best grained red oak board bow i've made or seen. Perfectly quartersawn with pretty much straight grain end to end. It's a lot heavier than cherry as well.
But if you look at the cherry's grain, and mind you this is just common cherry, you can see the growth rings are very solid and uniform, and the cherry itself is very dense, yet light. Shown below are two bow's risers made from the same 1X8, that I split into 3 staves. The first one was with the heartwood as the back, and the second was with the heartwood on the belly, cause of the grain's orientation. I think you'll see what I mean:
First the board itself, you can see the heartwood and sapwood clearly,
For this one, I went with the grain's orientation being played against the draw of the bow. This was a tough decision for me cause I was afraid the runoff would come back to bite me, even tho my theory proved somewhat accurate. I got less set on this bow than the one prior. Both had grain runoff at the limb's edges, but neither have checked. yet! lol
See? No voids or air pockets that could lead to problems in the future. Just nice dense wood with solid earlywood lines, and even better looking latewood.
But you asked about chatter, and your answer would be no chatter for me. But then again, I don't scrape, I use a belt sander mounted on it's edge. I did a few scrapes here and there on both of them, but still no chatter. Nice long answer for a short question!
Topic: # 6 - Finally a bow for myself (Read 1667 times)
