From our handy dandy bow wood list:
ASH: green .56; Oregon .56; blue .58; white .59; European .61. White is our heaviest ash. Almost all sapwood. Oregon looks and behaves almost identically to White.
WALNUT: black .55. Semi-ring-porous, easy to work, elastic for its mass, similar in performance to cherry, but more tension-safe. Will try to chrysal where cherry wont. A wonderful, overlooked bow wood. Bows can be all sapwood or all heartwood, or mixed, sapwood taking a bit more set in compression. The off-white sapwood can be worked down to 25% or so of limb thickness, creating appealing contrast with the almost black belly. Very high heartwood extractive level, so as with similar woods, it may be more resistant to water absorption. Its reported not to warp with rising and falling humidity, possibly for this reason.
WALNUT, European .56. Design as per Black. Not as pretty, but makes a nice bow. Strong enough in tension to tolerate being a backward bow: the crowned sapling surface as belly, the split back surface tillered.
Pay close attention to the types in your area, but the European varieties of each wood seem to be stronger than our American ones.
Here's a thread where White Ash and Black Walnut were used, with Walnut being the backing.
white ash and black walnut bilamIn the end, the Walnut did break, but the bowyer thinks it was due to going back and trying to fix the tiller. Too much wood removed at a runoff spot.
In either case, it's worth a try for a normal longbow.
It certainly looks great!
Since it seems to work, I decided to hold this hinge, otherwise I'll have a too little draw wheight.
