Has anyone ever made a bow out of Lemon wood? I know most of it use to come from Cuba. Where else can you get Lemon wood?

A few people have accessed old stock or obtained it in the UK.

The wood does grow elsewhere but seems to not show up that often.

There is nothing remarkable about it as far as performance goes, it's the workability that led to its widespread use.

I've not had the opportunity to try it. Supposed to be almost grain free/very homogeneous. Thanks to our govt. Cuban policy pretty much unobtainable.

When I was a kid I had a Ben Pearson Lemonwood bow,...wide relatively flat limbs. Followed the string terribly but I certainly enjoyed it. This would have been about 1952 - 1954 and I was about 8 - 10 years old. We were a military family and dad had to order it through the mail and have it shipped to us in Orleans, France. I've come across a few lemon0wood bows since then and pretty much believe they were the "lower-end" bows sold in catalogs and large mail-order houses. The bow I had may have come from Sears or Montgomery Ward, not sure. Ahhhhh yes, the very mention of the words "lemon-wood"...brings back memories!

Never heard of or seen a lemonwood self bow. Any I have seen had hickory backing. I made a few hickory backed. They were dogs. The wood is very dense/heavy, but not all that stiff like ipe is. So it requires a fair amount of wood to make a decent weight bow and if that bow isn't building enough energy to handle the heavy limbs it has to move forward, its a dog.

There are pure selfbow examples but some sort of backing worked its way into their manufacture and a lot of them have rawhide or later fiber and then fiberglass backings.

Well, dog or no, it's likely that lemonwood got thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of kids into archery, and many adults as well. It was cheap, easy to make a bow from, and could be mass produced with little effort relative to other woods. Stemmler and York sold them starting in the late 1920's and through the 1950's before composites became readily available to make into bows.

My Ol' Buck is heavy (mass) as Pear Drums said, and it has significant string-follow, but still can kill any game around and do it in a whisper quiet manner. Yep, there are much better woods, and I doubt too many bowyers would do much with it in today's need for high performance everything, but it got us here.

I would bet if we knew all we could about it, it would boggle the mind how many lemonwood bows were made and sold before and even after World War II and subsequent use of laminating processes. They still show up on Ebay as well, and now and then you see them in a corner of an antique store, all dusty and ignored. :)

I have an old lemonwood selfbow made by York in the original box with the arrows, target, tab, arm guard, and pamphlet probably from the 30's or 40's? I'm guessing. It's 63" ntn, stamped as 53# @ 28", 1 3/8" wide, with a shorter lower limb, no shelf or arrow strike plate, the box is in rough shape but the bow looks brand new... except it has about 1 1/2" of string follow. I haven't strung it or shot it... yet.

Never made a lemonwood bow myself. I could have bought a stave/slat once up at ETAR for $40 that had "Cuba" stamped on it, but I passed on it and bought an osage stave instead.

Without annual growth rings and being fine grained the way it is, lemonwood bows could be quickly and simply made, mass-produced if you will, for the time. They cranked em out. I should shoot this thing one of these days. Maybe it wants to hunt.

I just saw a York Lemonwood bow the other day in an antiques store with arrows for $60! The bow was 5’6”” and 30#. Too much money and I already have a bunch of them on display in my living room. Several York’s and a couple of Stemmler’s. Lance

My grandma bought me a lemonwood bow when I was a kid. She saw my bows that were green saplings braced with whatever cordage I could find. That bow was a serious upgrade! I bought those arrows that were painted up like candy canes for a quarter at the local hardware. Good times.

I made one. It's in my cellar. I don't think I backed it with anything. It i s actually called degame or that's one name for it. Jawge

I had one as a ten year old. It had a fair amount of cast compared to the hickory bow that i had. It's main flaw was that you had to be careful shooting it in cold weather. They tend to fly apart in cold temperatures.

Jawge, when i broke my lemonwood bow on a very cold day, I remembering letting go with something like "degame"! That may be how it got that name.

Yes George, The Lemon wood bow got us here. Bows just like old Buck. I don’t think those archers of the 1920’s to WWII enjoyed archery any less then today’s archers. And quite possibly they enjoyed it even more. Because they weren’t looking for the latest and greatest. Archery gear was real simple back then. Some might even say. The good old days. When bows were all wood and arrows were all wood. You had your back quiver and knife bow and arrows and were ready to go. I don’t remember anyone complaining about shooting old buck. All very positive reviews in that old Lemon wood bow. No idea how many they made. But it had to be a lot. And some of those old Lemon wood bows are still being enjoyed by an archer somewhere today I bet.;)

Oh no George! You did it again! Keep an eye out on those old Lemon wood bows on the big auction site. They will be going up in price shortly!;)

How many folks went out and got a New Buck?

Is it from a Lemon tree?

About 30 years ago I bought a roughly 2 x 5 x 72" piece of Lemonwood, Product of Cuba stamped on it, and The Stemmler Company- -The Stemmler George mentioned earlier. Lemonwood was one of the three main icon bow woods so I expected magic from it, but it tested about the same as other woods of its density.  I think it was so commonly used by commercial bowmakers of it's period because it's a beautiful wood, and it's straight grain, with little difference between early and late wood, let limbs be dependably machine formed. Can't remember details of the bows made from it.

Just looked in a stack of old wood test stat cards and found these pre TBB-1 preliminary lemonwood tests. Great days.

I have a Cuban Dagame Lemonwood take down carriage bow made by Jaques of London .... made I guess sometime around late 40's early 50@s .... it's OK .. nothing special

Who made a high end Lemon wood bow?

Who made a high end Lemon wood bow?

Laminated English longbows, made in England today, frequently use lemon wood as the belly, hickory as the back, and something like purple heart in the middle complete with horn nocks. A friend brought one back from England. Looked cool, not a great bow to shoot though.

https://www.archerylibrary.com/books/stemmler/essentials-of- archery/docs/making-lemonwood-bows.html

Not from a lemon tree

No, not from a lemon tree. I had one when I was a kid and thought it was so cool to have a bow from a lemon tree. Later I found out that it is degame wood and called lemon wood due to its color.

A lemon wood bow, from a lemon tree branch:

Becareful when shooting a old lemon bow with a spliced riser. I've had many fail in the splices. The last one I finally got comfortable with when it exploded cutting several fingers. I will not try another.

I have 20 - 25 old Lemonwood Bows, I've picked up over the Years. About 5, have very small holes drilled thru the Upper Tip. was told by a Old Guy that had a Hardware Store many years ago, that the hole was for running the string of a Price Tag and Hanging on a Peg ! Bob

Hmm, I always understood that the holes were for a string keeper.

Back in the seventies and early eighties I visited with famed WI bowhunter and HOF member Roy Case (1888 - 1986) at his home in Racine. He showed me quite a few of his bows dating from the 1920s to the present (then) and many of them had a small hole drilled through the upper tip of the bow. He went on to explain this was for a small and lightweight loop of string that could be used to hang the bow during storage. There was no mention of a string keeper or a price tag, the hole was for a loop to hang the bow.

Yep. Stringkeeper... a single strand of bowstring works.

Nobody in their right mind would drill a hole in a bow to hang a price tag.

Id lean towards hanging the bows to finish them as they ran down an "assembly line" of sorts. It was all about cheaper and faster.

I’d just like to say how great it is to see Tim Baker posting on the wall.

Back before about 1950 when you said 'bow' that was what you meant. Untold thousands were made and because of their elegant lines a good many are still around. They shoot very sweetly and accurately but not very far. Or fast, with ordinary wooden arrows.

Most were backed with a fibrous material that looks sort of like strong paper, it may have been called 'fortisan'. Most had leather grips which have broken down by now. But you could replace them in various ways and have a pleasant bow. I would shoot light aluminum arrows or better yet light carbon ones. Just think of carbon as a sort of petrified wood therefor natural, mostly. The bow won't care.

I had not heard about failure at a splice and had the impression that most were made from a single stave and not spliced. You could peel the grip and look. If spliced you could use a very strong wrap for safety.

Look for a nice looking and well made one and you might even get lucky and get a higher grade wood, like hickory or even Osage, which would also be more finely made. Ben Pearson made those at higher prices than his lemonwood models- lbg

Here's the like-new old York lemonwood bow I mentioned. It has a string keeper on it. That doesn't mean it wasn't hung by that hole to spray it though.

My parents gave me a Ben Pearson lemonwood longbow in 1955 along with a back quiver that the arrows always fell out of when you bent over. It looked like this one a friend gave me.

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