They weren't kidding about plum splitting

Yeah, I heard that plum will split if you try to dry it with the bark off. I thought a santa cruz winter would be OK though! I thought i could get away with it! Wrong. 2 out of 3 plum branches have giant cracks in them now. Possibly OK eventually but it will take a lot more work to wring something use- able out of them. I will be patient and not go against the laws of nature again in this particular fashion. Plum must be respected! Anything over 1 " in diameter will split if you peel the bark off and don't re-seal it with something.

Juniper bow

There once was a juniper tree. It seemed an ugly spiny mess for years until one day, I realized Juniper makes good bows! This is the first bow from that tree, just messing around really, to see what the wood could handle. It can handle a lot. There are no straight branches on the tree so I made a deflex bow and then bent the tips with a heat gun to make a gentle reflex-deflex design.

Can I make a recurve instead? Can the wood handle 3+ inches of reflex without breaking? I'm going to find out. The wood doesn't look like much: it's spiral-grained, and some of it died and re-grew near the tip; it has lots of small knots and pins. And it's got a high crown. None of that seems to make a difference.

I had to keep the gun on the wood for about 30 minutes to get a bend out of it. This is my first experience using a heat gun to bend wood. I'm really hoping steam works better because I don't care who you are, you are going to get bored standing for an hour with a heat gun in your hand, waving it back and forth, waiting for something to move.
Anyway, this bow pulls about 38 lbs and shoots very nicely..about 64" long and 1 1/4" at the widest point. I haven't checked it for speed yet. I'm close to breaking the 40 lb. barrier!

good idea/ bad idea

Putting water on a piece of wood to help you see the grain is a good idea. Unless that wood tends to check, in which case it's a bad idea. I learned this the hard way with a piece of french broom that began to check within minutes of me doing this. I probably screwed up a beautiful piece of wood. It has an amazing recurve shape naturally. It's nothing but cracks now. Woe is me. I'm gluing and clamping the cracks but will it be enough? I will find out. Plus, I'm steam bending it because it curved while it dried. I'm making all my mistakes on this piece, I hope.
Also, when steaming a piece of wood it is a good idea to prevent any metal from touching it as it can burn the wood, and then even if you sand off most of the burnt part it is very brittle and will break a week later when you try to bend it.

bow from french broom

I made a bow from french broom, it's about 68" long and 1" wide and pulls about 26 lbs. The wood doesn't take a lot of set before it breaks and it's not super-elastic but it's pretty strong and would make a good longbow. It's hard to find pieces that are straight though, I got lucky with this one. That stuff is everywhere though, I'm going to keep looking.

I pulled a splinter out of my hand! It had been stuck in there for about a month and really hurt but I couldn't get to it. Finally. Very bright light is useful for locating hidden splinters.

Make every sneeze count

Don't hold back, SNEEZE FOR REAL.

Bow from green wattle

I have never heard of a bow being made of acacia, specifically green wattle. This tree grows like a weed in various places around the bay area and beyond and is often tall, thin, and straight. You have probably seen it. So I cut one down in Ukiah, CA, my hometown, and made several bows from it, all of them selfbows with an unworked back. From breaking up small pieces of it for firewood, it seems like the outer layer may be more elastic than the rest of the wood. The original log diameter was about 4-5 inches. I think that the fact that the area is very dry may contribute to the strength of the wood as it grew slower than normal, with fairly tight rings. This tree was about 10.

bow #1: 41" long, 12 lbs. at 20". 1 1/4" width, 1/4 " thickness, 3/4 " string follow.
bow #2: 61" long, 23 lbs at 30". 1 1/2" width, 1/2 " thickness, 1 1/2 " string follow.
bow #3: 66" long, 30 lbs at 30". 1 3/4" width, 1/2 " thichness, 1 " string follow.

I don't have a chronometer so I don't know how it compares to other bow woods. These staves may also still be a little wet ( no moisture meter either) so I'm going to test their strength again in a few weeks to see if it has changed at all.

2 months later-- weight has not changed. It's pretty humid here though, 80%, and that has to keep the moisture in the wood up there.