You can make bows from wood with knots. They are just hard to tiller and usually have less poundage unless backed with something like sinew, rawhide or fibreglass. I have also seen some experimental carbon fibre backing which would work well too but I haven’t tried it. My bowyer days are quite long gone.
What free wood did you find today?
- Thread starter woodtickgreg
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Which one? The calicotome is way to small for anything except a pen blank (if you are lucky). The r. alaternus is reasonably stable, so once it's dry it can be used. This is a small pencil holder:
You can see just a tiny stripe between the yellow and the brown where the wood takes the orange/pinkish colour of the r. cathartica samples @daniscool sent me.
This is a 6-8" wide board waiting to be dry:
In fact I think the yellow is not actually sapwood but rather heartwood, but there is some discussion about naming on this.
This doesn't have knots, but rather proper cavities.
Hmm. You are right about that. As long as the back is not violated you can still make a bow from this. I would not try it as my skill as a bowyer is rather limited but Byron will probably be able to assess the situation better.