Bamboo Bows in North America

[RRosen]

Hello, and thank you for having me on this forum. My question is: can anybody give me information or lead me to a resource to find out when Bamboo and/or Bamboo-backed bows were first used in North America? Thanks, Ralph Rosen

[springbuck]

I frequent a traditional archery website called the STICKBOW, at www.stickbow.com. Lots of informed enthusiasts there. I make bamboo bows and really like backing bamboo flooring with raw bamboo slats. I've done a few in other woods.

Some of those guys are real history freaks, so I bet they can get you an answer.

Maurice thompsen mentions bamboo backed snakewood and lemonwood bows in "The Witchery of Archery" written not long after the Civil War.

[Mark Meckes]

The only sizeable bamboo native to the US is Arundinaria gigantea (http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/showgallery.php?cat=543), and it only gets to around 1 inch (2.5cm) in diameter.

Discussing this topic with some acquaintances of Native American background, they felt that the small size strips it produces may not have been conducive to bow making, and there would have been many other tree species more suitable for this purpose.

Again, this was pure culmjecture so you may find out differently.

Towards the later 1890's > early 1900's many new bamboo species introductions from Asia began to find they way into isolated regions of the US, so it may very possibly have been around this time that domestically grown bamboo began to be used for bow making in the US.

Mark