HISTORICALLY SPEAKING . . .

How to make a Bow, a String or a Set of Arrows. Making equipment & tools for use in Traditional Archery and Bowhunting.

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
Message
Author
Dennis La Varenne
Posts: 1776
Joined: Sun Sep 07, 2003 10:56 pm
Location: Tocumwal, NSW. Australia

HISTORICALLY SPEAKING . . .

#1 Post by Dennis La Varenne » Tue Jun 02, 2015 1:13 pm

I think I have just about got a copy of almost every model of straight-ended bow put out by the major wood bow manufacturers during their heyday.

The only other examples are perhaps those which were custom jobs from Pearson, early Bear, York, American Archery Co., The Outdoor Sports Mfg. Co., L. E. Stemmler, etc., or private bowyers of which there were not nearly as many as I supposed and who rarely seemed to identify themselves on their bows sadly – at least on those few I own, most of which are superb examples of the bowyer’s craft.

I have come to realise something interesting that had not occurred to me until recently and that is that there were very few self-bows in use or self-bow manufacturers in the hey-day of the all-wood bow. That is against much that I had believed of that period and perhaps of what most people today believe of that period of archery up until the introduction of fibreglass.

The reason for that seems to be that with the great increase in interest in archery after the Thompson Brothers did their book back in the 1870s, self-bow makers just could not keep up with demand.

The British were already making composite wood ELBs and the US makers were only able to meet demand by learning to use wood species which could be glued together in laminations which were reliable and could be used in mass manufacturing techniques to produce composite wood bow like the English did.

However, the English did not seem interested in getting bows into the hands of its general population possibly for reasons of social heirarchy, whereas, the Americans did. They were the democratisers of Archery, and they learned to produce very reliable wooden bows with as good or better performance than the standard six foot English Victorian pattern longbow.

The selfbows of those times and their bowyers were always held in the greatest regard of course because they would use only good Yew and Osage. But they were not available to the average wage-earner due to their enormous price.

For instance, in the 1941 Ben Pearson Catalogue, he lists a working Hickory hunting bow (501 series) for a list price of $6.00 and $8.00 for a static recurved Hickory bow, but a custom made Self-Yew or Self-Osage bows (902 series) or even spliced billets of those woods cost $32.50 and $37.50 for a static-recurved bow of the same materials. That is a difference in price of close to 600% which was often far more than for a modest firearm of those days.

Clearly, in order to get bows into the hands of the greatest number of aspiring archers, a cheaper method of manufacturing needed to be found using wood species which were cheaply, easily and commonly available. Those woods turned out to be Hickory and Cuban Lemonwood. Both woods could be made from commonly available lumber (as Americans refer to timber), and most importantly, they did not have to follow growth-rings on these species.

That was the answer.

So, in mass manufacturing, Hickory was relegated to the bottom line of bows at the cheapest price for the wage-earner market and Lemonwood bows tended to be aimed at the target shooting market who would pay more for a wood which did not let down as easily as Hickory over a day’s shooting out in the sun on a warm-hot summer day.

In this respect, Lemonwood was far superior even to good Yew which had a clear tendency to let down badly over a day’s shooting in Summer.

From the bows I now have in my collection, and from their prices in their catalogues, you can see that division of the market between production bows and custom-made bows.

None of the other makers listed above, examples of whose bows I have, made bows from Hickory. Only Ben Pearson did.

All the others used the more reliable and better performing Lemonwood but at a slightly higher price not out of reach to the average wage-earner.

All the manufacturers knew already that Lemonwood was an excellent wood and superior by far to Hickory. It did not chrysal, was not nearly so hygroscopic nor followed the string as much as Hickory. It took a set only slightly more than good Yew without all the problems of orneriness which one finds with Yew.

All the mass manufacturing bowmakers seemed to offer select staves of Lemonwood for beginning bowyers with good instructions on how to proceed.

Indeed, in his 1939 book “The New Archery”, Paul H. Gordon commented to the effect that good Lemonwood was so good and reliable that it should be much higher in price than it was and was a very close rival to good Yew in performance.

My own view is that with the swings and roundabouts of bowmaking, the ease of working of Lemonwood, its resistance to chrysalling, disregard of growth ring direction and resistance to letting down in warm humid weather are superior to its slightly lesser performance compared to equivalent quality Yew.

The term ‘letting down’ refers to a significant loss of draw weight over a day’s shooting during warm/hot humid weather from which Yew suffered. In target shooting, that meant that sights needed to be continuously reset during the day because the decreasing draw weight resulted in an increasingly higher trajectory as the day progressed. Osage, Lemonwood and well sealed Hickory, suffered no such problem once their final set had been taken.

A Yew bow had a significantly greater set at the end of a day’s shooting than did the other three bow woods, but began the day’s shooting brilliantly.

These days of course, we know much better how to dry wood to best effect and Hickory is not nearly the poor relation to other bow woods as it once was.

Today we know that it needs to be dried to a much lower moisture level than most other woods – somewhere between 6% and 10% which would cause other woods to rupture.

The problem of those early days was that the wood finishes were not nearly as good as today’s in controlling moisture ingress or egress – something critical in preserving the performance of good Hickory.

I have a good few of Ben Pearson’s bottom grade Hickory bows (502 series) which I received mostly with a large or almost brace-height set. The finish on these bows was a thin varnish which, with age, began to flake badly. The glues he used seemed not as good compared other bow makers because many of the riser blocks on his Hickory bows would begin to partially pop off at one fade out or the other - a disconcerting phenomenon when shooting.

However, by completely removing these riser blocks, cleaning out the old glue, regluing them with a modern glue, scraping off the old varnish and heat straightening the set out of the limbs, they became good performing bows again with increases in draw weight over the original penciled draw weight under the grip wrapping. All these bows stand on their lower limb at home and none have been compromised thus and none have taken a significant set of greater than one inch if I heat straightened them.

The same treatment was done to many of the Lemonwood bows from all makers in my collection, including Pearson Lemonwood bows whose riser blocks do not seem to want to remove themselves. Usually, they gain up to 5 lbs of draw weight over the marked draw weight. Through heat straightening, one York Archery Lemonwood bow increased by an astonishing almost 12 lbs.

However, back to the original thesis of this topic that in the golden age of wood bow archery over the first half of the 20th century, self bows were not at all common in the hands of the average archer bowhunter.

Looking through all the old archery magazines and books I have which begin around the late 1700s, most pictures by the time of the early 1900s have identifiable commercial bows in their hands, but there was always the underlying inference that the self bow from a renowned manufacturer was the apex of bow making and something to be aspired to, but rare for the average bow owner.
Dennis La Varénne

Have the courage to argue your beliefs with conviction, but the humility to accept that you may be wrong.

QVIS CVSTODIET IPSOS CVSTODES (Who polices the police?) - DECIMVS IVNIVS IVVENALIS (Juvenal) - Satire VI, lines 347–8

What is the difference between free enterprise capitalism and organised crime?

HOMO LVPVS HOMINIS - Man is his own predator.

Post Reply