Never tried it, but looking at the information on wooddatabase, it looks like it has fairly low stiffness, low elasticity, low density, and low hardness.
None of that is really good news.
For comparison, black walnut is equally stiff, ~15-20% more elastic, 10% more dense, and 20% harder.
So if your design required 2" wide limbs for walnut, sweet gum would need like 2.3-2.4" width in order to take similar set at the same draw weight and draw length .... approximately.
Long story short, I bet it will work ... if you go very wide and long ... but there must be better choices out there.
If you do try it, you might want to consider heat tempering the belly ... although who knows if the wood is tension safe or tension weak.
Topic: does sweetgum makes a bow? (Read 248 times)
