On a hunting site I frequent, a guy asked about burning wood. He's starting to. I told him about dry wood, top covering, etc... He's in WI and said about oak. I said I like BL better then oak because it drys faster and has good BTU. But just my opinion. Some poster jumped me and said "Don't burn BL. It's rare!" And he knows bow makers who would pay me good money for it. Then at the end added "wow." I had to laugh!. I told him it's NOT rare (around here anyway) and my woods have plenty of live and standing dead BL, and it's pretty invasive as it will grow in any type of soil. I said if he wants to send those bow makers my way, I'll be glad for them to pay me good money, but smart ones will just pick up the logs next to the road.
I don’t know a lot about traditional bows, but I’ve never heard of building them out of black locust. I would have thought it too brittle. Osage orange, certainly. But again, not my first field of experience. Interesting. Now I’m curious!
I have a cousin who has asked me for Osage Orange for bow building. He’s big into that. That guy got the 2 woods confused I bet.
I did some reading last night. Turns out they DO use black locust for bows, but they complain about the same things I suspected - brittleness, defect and compression failures, etc. Like I said, interesting! I learn something new every day. Occasionally what I learn is even useful.
Well the guy still says BL is rare. Im like whatever. You know what they say, never get in an argument with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience. Now time to go cut some BL!
Tell him to redirect his anger at what he's really upset about. I suppose ice is rare in the desert but that doesn't stop an Eskimo from making his house outta it. Sometimes you just gotta take a step back and laugh, kinda like what you're doing here.
I know ole has plenty of BL in his woods and he's in Wisconsin. Not really rare around here based on my observations. I had a guy reply to my FBM mulberry listing looking for bow making pieces. I have three 3-4" diameter logs 3-4' long put aside for him. IME BL seems too brittle for bow making, but Ive never tried to make one. I hate know it all's and will avoid arguing with them. My landlord is one. Burns fresh cut wood all the time despite what I've told him.
Apparently the Cherokee used BL quite a bit for bows. My initial thought was how hard it would be to find a good stave 60-72" or longer that was defect-free. That's not going to come from a young tree. So now I'm wondering how folks with semi-primitive tools harvested defect-free blanks from large mature trees? That would have been a LOT of work without steel tools, but obviously they did it (and a lot of other things that still impress me even today - the quality of some of the arrow and spear points I find are phenomenal, although some look rough like somebody like me made them. LOL) Curiouser and curiouser.
While BL trees aren't on every corner, I wouldn't call it rare. Now beech, IMO, that's rare around these here parts.
Even in a sparsely timbered area like where I am, black locust is not rare. Now that I know what it is, I see it with regularity. Apparently its nature of being able to grow and thrive in a wide variety of environments made it a good candidate for planting around homesteads.
According to the gulag search engine, it's restricted across all of WI. Doesn't mean it's not present, just that it's no longer widely planted due to state regulations. I'm sure some decades ago there was a lot more of it around. There's no shortage of it around me, thankfully. Black locust | (Robinia pseudoacacia) | Wisconsin DNR.
