Celery Top Pine

[Nezwin]

I see that Celery Top Pine has successfully been used in arrow making previously and that OzBow Industries provide ground lams of this material, does anyone have any reported success in builds with it?

It is notoriously difficult to source but I've managed to obtain half a dozen boards and as a distant cousin of Yew I am hoping for big things. I am considering a 1/8" Hickory backing laid up in a straight or mildly reflexed profile. For safety I'll keep the limbs at 1.5" width for at least half the limb length, perhaps narrowing to 1.25" on the next bow if the first is successful. I understand it responds exceptionally well to heat & steam bending, so this could be an avenue for experimentation further down the track.

Thoughts?

[greybeard]

......and that OzBow Industries provide ground lams of this material, does anyone have any reported success in builds with it?.....

My Vince Hamilton [a Brisbane based bowyer late 1980’s] 60# longbow had vertically laminated celery top pine core laminations under .040? brown glass.

Vince’s longbows were based on the Howard Hill pattern and as such had hand shock. Apart from that the bow performed very well.

Selfbows will probably be a different ball game.

Daryl.

Properties Of Celery Top Pine.pdf

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[perry]

Celery top Pine is a good timber for Arrows and Core Lamination's, it is not a good Selfbow Timber. Try it and see but I'd make it double your Draw plus 12 long and wide with a Flat or Lenticular Cross section. Don't back it with a compression strong material

regards Jacko

[Nezwin]

Thanks for both your input. When I've received the boards and had time for a glue up, I'll post the results.

Neil

[Hamish]

I made a bow from celery top, it was English in design, stiff handle 1&1/8"wide, 74" long. An English gentleman, living in Tasmania had some successes with it, though he did say it could chrysal. Mine was very straight grained so it didn't need backing, but it did get some chrysals.
Definitely go with Perry's advice, wider flatter limbs etc.

It is a lovely wood, beautiful to work. I was splitting some scraps and the stuff was very clean splitting because of the straight grain and fine growth rings. Unfortunately all Tasmanian wood has gone up in price dramatically since they are much stricter in the amount of area that can be logged now.
Hamish

[Nezwin]

Thanks, Hamish. The plan at the moment is for a 72" ntn stiff-handled, rectangular cross-section bow (I'm not familiar with building flexi-handles and I tend to shoot from the shelf as opposed to knuckle), initially with a 12" handle section and 1.5" wide parallel limbs for 15" from end of fade tapering to 0.5" in the final 15" of the limb. I'll back with a 1/8" - 1/16" hickory backing which will hopefully not overpower the belly. I'll also induce 2"-3" of 'perry' reflex in the glue up to counter any set that may occur. I tend toward target weight bows, which are very forgiving of tillering/material/design flaws, so hopefully it will work. I should be able to get this started before mid-June, I'll be sure to post pictures.

The grain isn't particularly straight on these boards - I'm buying them from a gentleman who's boat I recently patched up, so I can't complain. He'd built a boat from Celery Top before and had a few boards left. He loved how it was easy to work and took to bending quite easy while being very light.

It's good to hear some experience on how it works with tools, my main point of interest being how comparable to Yew it might be. I loved working with Yew, it being soft, forgiving & very receptive to dry heat, which made life very easy. If this works out, Celery Top Pine backed with Hickory would be a very attractive 'pseudo-Yew' look, in laminates.

[hunterguy1991]

Look forward to seeing what you come up with Neil!! Could even shape out a set of arrows to go with the bow

[Hamish]

I wouldn't rate it anywhere near yew in terms of performance and versatility of design, but I can see a nice flatbow coming from the stuff. Its similar to yew in the sense its a softwood, but also usually very fine grained and slow growing, which makes it relatively quite hard and dense for a softwood. I could easily see how a woodie might recommend it as a substitute for yew, but yew is much better at handling compression.

[Hamish]

Yeah, a thin backing is probably the best idea with hickory. If you can get a good tiller before taxing it too much hopefully you can avoid chrysals.
Mine did'nt have any obvious weakspots, but it had a high stacked belly. I'd definitely try it again, with a flat belly but the stuff is so pricey these days.

[Dennis La Varenne]

Interesting experiment. I have had glassed bows made with the stuff as core material. On those Hill styled bows, they were delightfully light in the hand and reasonably quick because of the relatively low limb mass.

When new, my bows (I had two) had a very pale creamy colour but which went to a colour very close to new Yew with a few years on them. The growth rings resembled Yew very clearly and back in those days in the early - mid 80s, it was pondered if it could be an Australian Yew equivalent.

I never met anyone who actually built a self-bow from it however. From Daryl's attachment, it has a very modest dry mass of 650kg/m^3 which is not so far from reasonable Yew (av. 705kg/m^3). Its compressibility resistance will be the thing to watch out for.

If you try Yeoman's bending test on a sample, it will save you a lot of wasted material and effort perhaps. Certainly, if you do this test, it will alert you to whether or not it will stand a narrow bow or a wide flatbow, and whether or not to back it if its compression resistance is greater than its tension resistance.

[Nezwin]

If you try Yeoman's bending test on a sample, it will save you a lot of wasted material and effort perhaps.[/size]

Great idea! I'll get in touch with Dave and take a piece over for him at some point.

The 'experiment' has been delayed for a week but I'll post results as the bow is completed along with all data on design, build, etc. I've changed my mind in regard to reflexing the glue up as, in the first instance at least, it will be worth getting a sense of how much set the material will take. Getting a feel for this will impact future design choices. From a woody-perspective, it'll be very interesting to see how the properties of two distantly related timbers have developed in isolation.

[Dennis La Varenne]

If you get over to Dave's, he will most likely show you how to do the test properly and with the numbers, he may be able to crunch them in his 10-arc app in Excel and print you out a nice set of numbers so you can profile the shape of your bow within the load limits of the actual piece of wood you have. Yay maths!!!!!

[Nezwin]

If you get over to Dave's, he will most likely show you how to do the test properly and with the numbers, he may be able to crunch them in his 10-arc app in Excel and print you out a nice set of numbers so you can profile the shape of your bow within the load limits of the actual piece of wood you have. Yay maths!!!!!

He's pretty amazing with that excel & those numbers. It's ironic in some ways - I'm an Engineer yet I prefer the 'art' side of bowmaking, he's a non-Engineer-type (not sure if he'd want me to put his profession on a public board?) and he's into the 'science' side of bowmaking. Great guy to meet and a real credit to the Australian bowmaking fraternity.

The boards arrived earlier this afternoon and they're much, much lighter in colour than I was expecting, Much more like Pine than Yew but with a definite Yew-like grain & feel to them. They were also noticeably light, heavier than pine but lighter than, say, Hickory.

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In the final photo (photo 5.jpg) I've placed the hickory backing on the Celery Top Pine board for colour comparison. They're almost identical! Very difficult to discern them.

Photo 3.jpg shows the end grains, which would appear to be surprisingly porous. Unfortunately all six boards are back sawn, which makes finding straight grain difficult, so they will be almost all backed. Dimensionally they are 6" x 1" x 2m (mixing up metric & imperial there!) so if it's any good I should have enough for a few bows there.

When the first bow is off the tillering tree, I'll post the results.

[Dennis La Varenne]

Nezwin,

I know what Dave's profession is.

With backsawn timber as the belly of the bow, it doesn't matter about grain direction.

That colouring is what was on my glassed bows when new years ago, but it darkens to a honey colour and looks for all the world like a lighter coloured Yew. It can go to a moderately orange colour also that I have seen. Only one VERY old glassed bow I saw many years ago (maybe a Vince Hamilton job) had a deep copper colour in the lams. Age improves the stuff visually.

[Nezwin]

Stave was glued up and marked out. Dimensions were 74" total length for 72" ntn, 4" handle section plus 6" fades for a 16" rigid riser section (which, in hindsight, is too big) and 23" working limb length. Limbs were 1.5" wide parallel to 23" from centre where they tapered to 1/2" at the nocks. The limbs consisted of a 1/8" Hickory (spliced at the centre from two 40" lengths, so they were matched grain and hence the overlay at the centre) backed to Celery Top Pine, full limb thickness checked with calipers as 1/2" at tips, 1/2" at 23" from centre tapering to 9/16" at 8" from centre (start of fades). So a pretty standard flatbow with an exaggerated riser.

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Cured, trimmed, sanded, nocks cut & floor tillered, the shortest string I had to hand bought it to a low brace. From the floor tillering I was confident it shouldn't be a big issue.

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A few short draws and a bit of tweaking got it to 24" but I'm hesitant to go much further. I think it needs a bit off mid-limb but I'm going to take a while to think it over. It's pulling 30# @ 24" which I'd take with a pinch of salt - I'm only using my tillering spring scale at the moment, the digital scale (which is far more accurate) has been mislaid.

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As it currently stands (a bit clearer),

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Still got to cut the flares, shape the handle & cut a sight window but the working parts are shaping up. I've seen worse tillering jobs called bows but the mid-limb is bothering me.

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Hickory grain wasn't perfect but good enough to do the job.

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15 minutes after unstringing, set had settled at 1 5/8".

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Working with the wood it certainly feels like a pine, albeit a very strong & dense one, akin to a softer hard wood, like Red Oak but slightly denser & tougher. There's no sign of compression fractures but a heavier bow would be needed to test the materials limits, 30# @24" isn't representative, really. It looks great though and has a beautiful grain to it.

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Another bit of tillering and a couple of hours on the riser and should be time for shooting in.

[hunterguy1991]

Nice work there Neil, its coming along!!

For myself personally, looking at the tiller you have there I would soften up the tips a little to reduce the bend in close to the handle, particularly on the right limb.

I think even for these bows you want a smooth even curve along the entire limb length ( Daryl, Dennis etc correct me if I'm wrong on that one) and it looks to me like your limbs have quite a bit of bend in close to the handle and straighten out towards the tips.

Other than that its a sweet looking little bow. Particularly like the soft yellow colour the Pine has.

Colin

[perry]

I like the long Fadeouts. You will need a Circular Tiller, those Limb Tips need to bend a lot more. I'm a bit concerned theres too much bend at the Fades and as you say the Mid Limb needs work. If it where me with such a marginal Timber I would Tiller it so that all but the last 4 inches of the Limb where bending

regards Jacko

[Nezwin]

Nice work there Neil, its coming along!!

For myself personally, looking at the tiller you have there I would soften up the tips a little to reduce the bend in close to the handle, particularly on the right limb.

I think even for these bows you want a smooth even curve along the entire limb length ( Daryl, Dennis etc correct me if I'm wrong on that one) and it looks to me like your limbs have quite a bit of bend in close to the handle and straighten out towards the tips.

Other than that its a sweet looking little bow. Particularly like the soft yellow colour the Pine has.

I like the long Fadeouts. You will need a Circular Tiller, those Limb Tips need to bend a lot more. I'm a bit concerned theres too much bend at the Fades and as you say the Mid Limb needs work. If it where me with such a marginal Timber I would Tiller it so that all but the last 4 inches of the Limb where bending

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Much appreciated.

Colin, I thought you'd like the colours - you've noted your enthusiasm for the white woods Not sure how this would do on a D-Section warbow though, similar to what Hamish has tried in the past. And 60lb+ might be as ask, but it'd need to be tested.

Jacko, I'm going to cut in a subtle curve to the fades, an improvement on the straight lines currently there. I would've done it while doing the main cut out but I've got a 1.5" blade on the big saw at the moment and didn't want to change it just yet! I've got a little 10" bandsaw I might see that could do the job - the benefits of a new, larger workshop

I've had the night to think on it and taken a look at the pictures with a fresh set of eyes and I think you're both right about the tips. I'm thinking a little tickle on the limb portion 6"-18" in from either tip but I'm overly cautious on removing material now after ruining a few bows with hinges back in the day. Should get the last touches done this weekend and will post a few more pictures.

Neil

[perry]

Be very careful Nezwin, I'd say your already in trouble if you started Tillering without the Fadeouts cut in, I'd leave them ! Tiller is all that matters, aesthetics has nothing to do with how a Bow Shoots, reshaping the Fades could compromise the Tiller now that your so far into it

A good set of Rasps is Vital to Bowmaking, safer than a Bandsaw

regards Jacko

[Dennis La Varenne]

it looks to me like your limbs have quite a bit of bend in close to the handle and straighten out towards the tips.

Yep, that's what I think too, Colin.

Also, Perry is right about the rasps, etc and that tiller precedes cosmetics.

[Nezwin]

Thank you everyone for the constructive & positive feedback.

I find that it's best to tiller after walking away from a bow for a few days and looking at the pictures of the draw. I never seem to be able to get my eye 'into the zone' initially and looking at the pictures now, it's obvious that the limbs aren't bending enough at the tips. On the day it wasn't so clear to the eye but it's been a few months since I turned my hand to bows, so I'm somewhat rusty. 'Getting my eye in' (or 'engaging my brain', as my dad would've said...) is the main reason I only tiller to around the low 20" region initially. 20 minutes/half hour of tillering on Saturday should fix up the last of the bend though.

After finishing the tillering and all the mechanical parts are up to standard, I'm going to grind or cut in some curves on the fades like this -

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It's only a rough sketch but you get the idea. Black lines are what is currently on the bow, I'll probably cut to a curve similar to the blue line (albeit smoothed out, obviously). I don't believe it will effect the tiller a noticeable amount (the 1/8" over 1" gradient will be stiff enough) but I could be wrong. It will pretty the riser section up though, away from the blocky monstrosity it currently is. I didn't cut it like this prior as I was keen to get tillering the bow and didn't want to swap out the blades on the saw. I could put the curve in with rasps but a saw and/or belt sander is going to be much quicker & efficient. Following that, I'll cut a sight window and shape a handle to fit the palm of the archer. Then I'll shoot it in.

[perry]

I'm not sure your quite grasping what Tillering is Nezwin, those Fades are part of the Limb, they will Bend some and they will influence the Rest of the Limb. You must Tiller the Limb as a whole !

regards Perry

[Dennis La Varenne]

Nezwin,

Perry is right. The limbs should actually bend into the fadeouts, meaning that the actual fadeout bends as well. The fadeout area is actually a functioning part of the inner limb.

That last blue line is still far too steep in the outer 1/3. Fadeout means exactly that - that the riser dips down from the handle height and progressively and in a controlled fashion blends or 'fades' into the actual limb so that in silhouette, one cannot tell where the handle dip finishes and the limb begins.

Any kind of rigidity in the area where the dips fade into the limb is the precursor of a hinge area because two lines of compression meet at the end of the fadeout - one coming in toward the riser from the limbs and the other descending down along the dip to where the riser finishes - thus creating the potential hinge area.

So, you need to 'fade' your fadeouts so shallowly that you cannot see or feel where they end. A fadeout is NOT a point or position so much as an area along the limb which is able to assume some degree of bending. By doing so, compression forces from along the limb are dissipated into the slope or dip of the riser rather than butting against it.

I hope that makes sense.

[Nezwin]

I perhaps haven't explained myself adequately.

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Above is a sketch diagram of a typical curve I would plot on a limb for a fade.

The black line is the line I would plot using straight lines and sharp angles.

The blue line is the line that I actually cut and the red line is to where I grind on the sander or with rasps.

This is all smoothed out and done in such a way that there are no sharp transitions, as advised by all. I use electric sanders now for ease of use & time, in my first few bows I primarily used hand tools (they being selfbows from Indian woods, Nepali bamboo and Canadian Yew) and following that some friends & I had laminates made up which we glued up & worked with a couple of rasps, sandpaper and a handsaw. Slow work. I think I'd stick with handtools for selfbows - as that certainly captures the 'art' of bowmaking - but for working boards I tend toward power tools, where appropriate.

The bow in this thread is now 4" shorter (to bring up the weight a little) and has a semi-pyramid limb profile. By reprofiling in this way I have a clear edge on which to draw a new thickness profile. It will either end up a disaster to be added to the wood burner, or a usable bow. Either way - and this is my main ethos - I'll walk away having learned something.

[Dennis La Varenne]

Nezwin,

I think we do understand what you intend to do and you are on the right path, but for a dip to convert to a working fade-out, the outer part of your dip needs to be even shallower again. That is important to know. The fade-out area is a bending area and must be shallow enough to enable bending.

I have redrawn your picture with a different shaped dip terminating in a fade-out area which is almost parallel with the belly of the bow.

It is not important how steep the dips starts out, so long as the fade-out area is as shallow as possible so that it can flex.

The curve in my alteration could be shallower still, but it would become a bit difficult to see. For the sake of illustration, I should have extended it out to at least the 5 inch mark with the red curve laying visibly almost dead flat against the bow limb to demonstrate the point being made.

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[Nezwin]

Thanks for the clear & precise clarification, Perry & Dennis.

It's good to see a 'correct' curve (I use the term 'correct' loosely, there is no 'correct' in many ways, so perhaps 'traditional' or 'most efficient' is a better term, not that I wish to start a debate or argument, please) plotted on grid paper - without a reference grid, my poor eyes (or poor memory!) often distort curves. It's a similar story with the tillering. With a grid to reference against I find I'm able to reproduce curves & shapes much better.

I'm sure many people, and particularly the wood artists in the bowyer community, would look at the curve and reproduce it from memory. Me, I see that and gauge that for every inch horizontally there is a vertical reduction of approximately half of the remaining height until vertical measurement of the curve is about 1/8" after which the curve transitions very, very gently in a semi-lineal manner, as a rule of thumb. Not very artistic but very reproduce-able without templates.

The fade profile may be able to be applied retroactively to this bow but it could result in failure. We'll have to see this weekend. I've another stave glued up for a friends son, so he'll probably make better work out of it than me!

[Dennis La Varenne]

Neil,

Those dips and fadeouts look pretty good to me and I reckon you've got the idea pretty well.

All of us are only trying to show you how best to avoid your bow blowing up at the limb-fladeout juncture. We don't see you as nit-picking. You are asking legitimate questions about things you don't understand clearly. Nothing wrong with that. I wish more people would do so rather than take offence at advice proffered.

About developing an eye for such things, you will learn that sooner than you think once you have been looking at bending bowlimbs for a while. It will come almost unconsciously and one day it will click in your head that you do 'get it'.

As for myself, when bow limbs are bending on the tiller, I do not look at the limbs, but look at the shape of the area beneath the limbs, ie, the area occupied by the shape of the curved limbs. I usually stand back and hold some kind of straight edge in front of my eyes which extends from nock to nock and let my brain assess the symmetry of the area of the curves on either side of the tiller, if that makes any sense.

It is astonishing how well your mind can pick up small differences in that area and the limb shape difference between the two sides of the tiller. If you then look quickly back and forth between the two sides, you can pick up very accurately where there is a developing hinge area or an area which is not coming enough and causing the opposite side of the bow to come too much.

And, if it does fail, there is always the next bow and much learned from the broken bow.

[Nezwin]

Thank you everyone for the advice & guidance. After shortening, reprofiling & proper tillering the bow came out at a meagre 25lb @ 28". No good for anyone except children or my wife, who I cut a left-handed shelf for.

However, from off the bat I had actually been building a second bow with offcuts from the first which I expected to 'test to failure'... I was pleasantly surprised.

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I had two 30" sections which I drew a width & thickness profile on (1 3/8" wide at the fades, parallel to 8" from tip, tapering to 1/2" nocks) and applied direct heat with peanut oil, clamped over a 8" x 3.5" form. The wood took the bending quickly & easily, as Celery Top Pine is famous for in the boat building industry. After this I applied a 1/8" Hickory backing and glued a short 10" handle section before cutting. The handle is a collection of North American timbers in laminates, left over from a failed bow years ago. Red Oak, Maple, Walnut, Bamboo and Ipe, if I remember correctly.

The bow tillered easily to a fair 49lb @ 28", although after shooting in I would expect that to drop a little. the limbs are a very little under 1/2" at the fades, say 7/16", tapering to 5/16" 8" from the tip where it stayed parallel until the end of the limb) I'll have to post a full draw picture. But more importantly, it demonstrated that Celery Top Pine can handle more representative weights. To be totally honest, I was really expecting this to fail. At 58" total length and 56" ntn it is the shortest bow I've ever made and at 45lb, the heaviest in a while.

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After unstringing the limbs took considerable set - over 1" - but they soon came back. I would imagine it will take a nice profile after settling, similar to an Osage/Bamboo Sam Harper bow I have (the Singapore bamboo recurve he has linked to on his site).

Mechanically the bow is finished, just shaping & finishing to be done to the non-mechanical sections. I don't usually name bows but this one would be a good candidate for 'Surprise!', if it survives.