Bill,
I have never heard that colloquial use of the term about paddle bows before. It is a new one on me.
Rod,
That is an interesting thought, however there must be a point where a bow becomes a collectible that would not be shot. Wood is organic and it seems it must suffer degradation over time, even if it is well protected from the elements and fungal attack? At what age do you reckon is safe to be sure that the wood is still at +99% of it's original structural strength (assuming the bowyer has not over designed the bow)?
If I had a bow that was say 500 years old I would not even string it. Not because I might be afraid that it would break, but because of how stupid I would look if it broke
I don't even try to estimate whether or not the bow is at any percentage of its original structural strength. I just bend them and see what happens. If they break, and two have (Jeff was there when they did) then bad luck. I certainly do not feel foolish. They would have broken in any case because they were faulty. The particular brand was not one of America's better makes and the Lemonwood was decidedly suspect in its grain structure compared to the better grade of Lemonwood used by other makers. They could easily have survived because they were not used much. Certainly, their exteriors did not indicate much usage. A 500 year old bow is one of morganp's museum pieces. It tells you something about its physical dimensions and material, but not what it was capable of. If I could not find any fault with the bow, I would bend it. If it was a water soaked bow, any bending would not tell one anything other than it was waterlogged and would take an expected set like wet spaghetti.
The only other way to guesstimate what such a bow was capable of would be to do some experimental archaeology as was done with the Mary Rose bows and what I intend to do with a Meare Heath reproduction on a full length stave of Yew I have here. The original artifacts don't tell us anything about capability. Only a working bow can do that.
morganp
What is nonsense to you is practical bowyery and archery to me. All the Mary Rose bows would have told us very little unless some were sacrificed by bending them and risking breakage. If they were not, then we would know little other than that they were of a certain range of lengths and girths and made from Yew. History already knew that much. I would not clear out all our museums because of my dictum. That ridiculously extrapolated comment was a nonsense on your part.
I spoke of no bow other than the bows in my collection. I am not an archaeologist. I am a bowyer. I am interested in bows which work, not bows which do not. I collect old bows and USE them to find out what they are capable of and how they were made and how they were tillered or their collection tells me nothing of bowmaking value. To that extent, I have similar aims to the archaeologist.
But I iterate, that a bow in MY possession which is not shootable is firewood. It tells me almost nothing of how it works and why it works.
What you do with your firewood is your own business, but you most certainly will not be getting any of mine. It is winter down here and quite cold. They have a practical use. There is no point keeping rubbish when there are many examples of exactly the same bow still existing which does work. If you talk about reference, then do it on a bow which works, not rubbish which does not.
Daryl,
These bows are almost entirely in original condition. Very few are in so good a conditon as those 4 Morgan bows. Many are pretty sad cosmetically and I use copies of old catalogues and archery magazines to see how they looked originally.
I am in the process of restoring most of them as much as I can, but only if they are shootable. No matter how nice the appear, if they show any sign of failure, they are and will be firewood. It is a great pleasure to me that most of these bows, mostly of commercial manufacture, were made so well that after 70+ years, they still shoot well even though the old shellac varnish is badly cracked and flaking off and the leather handle wrappings are so badly deteriorated that they too are flaking or peeling off.
I can do something about all those problems. But underneath all that cosmetic damage, the wood is still sound and shootable, even to the extend that perhaps around 40 of them have I have been successfully able to remove the often very serious string follow which many of them have from being left braced for protracted periods and get them back to almost factory spec. with an improvement in draw weight, often a bit above their nominal draw weight. I posted a thread on this process some weeks ago as you will remember.
So, the only refurbishing these bows have undergone is by myself that I know about. The Morgans came from a bloke who was not an archer, so those bows are original so far as he knows from his father. The trail went from Morgan to his father's shop, then on to him and to me finally. They never got to the selling stage from his father's shop because a couple of them still had their original swing tags on them. The chances of them being refurbished is small.
I do have a Bear Bush Bow which clearly has been refurbished because it had broken within the medial lamination of the lower limb and been glued together again. That bow too is shootable, but because of the nature of the repair, when braced, it has an exaggerated amount of tiller in the lower limb.
If it breaks, it will likewise be firwood, even though it is an interesting bow to look at. But I can see what it looks like in the many extant pictures of Bushbows on the internet, so I have no interest in keeping it otherwise. It will be salvagable only if I can apply a very thin laminate of Osage over the belly to stiffen it or the same of Hickory to the backing. There is no damage to either of the belly or backing lams. All the damage occurred to the medial lamination. If I can obtain another sound example, I will get rid of this one certainly.
(PS: I have just edited this post for spelling and grammatical errors. 2014 07 22)
Jeff, as you said great workmanship and great looking.
