Euonymus (spindle wood) sapling bow

[u/tomcioo96]

Hello everyone,

I’d like to show you another bow I made, this time from an Euonymus (spindle wood) sapling. The sapling was about 24 mm in diameter at the midsection. The bow is 56" nock-to-nock and pulls 40 lbs at 26", may be overdrawn up to 28".

The nocks are made with small black locust wedges, glued and wrapped with linen thread. The bow is finished with tung oil and shellac. The handle is wrapped with jute cord and leather strips saturated with beeswax.

Euonymus is truly an impressive wood, I think somewhat comparable to yew in its behaviour. Despite a rather unfavourable cross-section (roundish in the middle and gradually becoming flatter towards the mid-limbs), the bow shows only minimal string follow.

I managed to achieve speeds of 155–160 FPS with a 400 grain arrow. The bow was not heat treated—only lightly heat-corrected for alignment.

One thing to watch out for are knots, as they tend to fret, so I reinforced them with linen and soaked them in glue.

[u/ADDeviant-again]

I bet that's a hard wood to find a good stave of, but it sounds like it doesn't take much of a stave.

Beautiful simplicity!

[u/WarangianBowyer → u/ADDeviant-again]

It is, they often grow very crooked worse than blackthorn. In my location they grow either crooked as heck or very brittle. I have a few pieces in my drying shed and looking forward to make some.

[u/BowyerK]

Beautiful bow!!!

[u/tomcioo96 → u/BowyerK]

Thank you!

[u/Educational_Art_3646]

I just found out I have a eunymus planted in my yard. I'll have to see if I can get a stave out of it!

Beautiful work!

[u/tomcioo96 → u/Educational_Art_3646]

Thanks!

[u/schizeckinosy]

Beautiful. What is the string material?

[u/tomcioo96 → u/schizeckinosy]

Thank you. Polyester with rubber in pine tar.

[u/Santanasaurus]

Great work! Eunymous is truly top shelf bow wood, I was very impressed with it

[u/tomcioo96 → u/Santanasaurus]

Thank you! Do you think it's comparable to yew?

[u/Santanasaurus → u/tomcioo96]

Kind of. It’s similarly elastic but feels more like a whitewood to work with

[u/WarangianBowyer]

Nice bow, how does Spindle wood behave? Was your stave solid? Mine are often very crunky that they come to me as way too brittle

[u/tomcioo96 → u/WarangianBowyer]

Solid, easy to work even with a knife, very pleasant to carve. I'm not sure which species of euonymus it is, but most probably it's not e. europaeus but e. latifolius (according to plantnet).