Finding good supply of hickory

[Living_waters]

Has anyone else had trouble getting good hickory for laminated bows?
I have had a run of hickory doing every weird thing you can think of. Ground some lams the other day to use on the belly of a bow. When I did a dry run of my lay up, the belly lam where it run up the handle retailed the curve after it was unclamped. after it was tillered to day it took a bunch of set right in the middle of one limb. it is a pyramid style bow, limbs are almost perfectly symmetrical; same thickness width and same rolled edge.

[Pat B]

Hickory makes a very good backing, a good core lam but a poor belly lam. It is weak in compression and if the humidity is high hickory becomes a noodle!

[GREG IN MALAD]

There is a bunch of variation in hickory lumber, some of it is even pecan. When I buy hickory I look for the straightest, heaviest lumber with very little early growth. In your humid climate hickory isn't the best choice for a belly core, but here it works very well. After all, Dan Perry has set more than a few flight records with hickory.

[Living_waters]

I know it is a poor choice for a belly lam, but it is what I had on hand. I made a Boo Backed hickory using some one else design and numbers. Came out about 10lbs less than intended. So I added some thin belly lams and it gave me right at 11lb.

I always warm my hickory for several hours in the hot box (90 degrees) to help with the humidity. But like I said this lam material still retained the bend, it did not even attempt to spring back. Never even seen wet hickory do that.  

Last few times I have harvested hickory here, it has had a high silica content making it weak. So I have been buying my cores and lams.

[PEARL DRUMS]

Jeff I have built a few HBH and a few HBRO. Belive it or not the HBRO performs better. Maybe give that a try on your next lam'ed bow. Red oak is easy to find straight, white oak would be even better.

[Living_waters]

Greg if you would have seen this board you would have thought it was the prettiest hickory you ever had seen. I have made several hickory bows with some really good results, humidity usually makes them sluggish but careful handling can correct that. What I have been getting lately is not humidity related.

My thoughts are growing climate maybe, or poor handling of raw material. Wood all has had large late growth and very thin early. But the early is very porous. After finish sanding with 500 grit and burnishing with glass it feels like a hard perfectly smooth surface but when you apply stain or poly , early growth seems it up and become rough kinda like it does when you steam or boil it.

[Living_waters]

Pearl I love white oak, if my local mill had not went out of business I would not consider another wood for backing or cores. The lam I ground down was one I had taped to a live oak core that was next on the list (would have been my first h backed oak). But I decided to thin it and use it on the bamboo I just had finished.
Thing that keeps me coming back to trying hickory is the fact that it is forgiving, meaning If give some one a hickory bow and they let cousin bob pull it back behind his ear, it may take some set but chances are it wont grenade.

[Pat B]

I don't build many lam bows or backed bows anymore but I know that the most critical parts of them is using the wood with the right compression strength for the belly and the right tension strength for the backing. The core gets very little stresses and it is not that critical.IMO   If you don't have the right wood for the design you want to build then build a bow that uses the wood you have appropriately.
  The only hickory that I have ever had break on me(in over 25 years of wood bow building) was infected by fungi which made it brittle. Healthy hickory can and will bend badly if it has too much moisture and is badly tillered but it will rarely break.
  The reason that Dan Perry likes to use hickory is because hickory performs very well in the super dry climate of Utah and the desert SW. He can have his flight bows down to 4% to 6% and hickory shines at those low M/Cs. A flight bow is built to shoot one world record arrow! Anything more than that is icing on the cake. We as hunters, etc want a bow to last thousands of shots and we want the bows performance to be as constant as possible. If you live where the climate is dry all the time hickory will work well as backing and belly wood. If you live where the humidity is high most of the year or fluctuates a lot you have to choose when to use your hickory bows. I have seen a 10# swing in draw weight on hickory bows over a year due to the R/H at the time. I haven't noticed too much difference when using hickory as a backing due to humidity although I'm sure there is some. A good finish will slow down the hygroscopic rate but the moisture will eventually get into hickory over time.

[Living_waters]

Humidity is the reason I believe I like white oak so much Pat. It doesnt seem to be effected by out side conditions at all, cold, heat, rain it seems impervious to it.
The hickory bows I have made, I have paid special attention to the MC and given instructions to the owners on how to store and care for the bow. Even when I work with hickory lams I keep them in the hot box right up till they have at least 3 coats of poly (brushed on).