And can you make a bow out of it?

That would be what we call, honey locust. I'm not sure on the building a bow out of it.

Honey Locust is the tree but I,m not a boyer so I can,t help you there

Yeah, honey locust is what we called them when I worked for the Colorado State Forest service, grew them for wind breaks and habitat, again, not a bowyer so don't know if good building material or not.
John

Honey locust, i've seen risers and i know laminations are available. I have a good sized log but haven't had time to work with it yet. i would bet it wood make a fine selfbow. lots of band aids , tetnus shot, somebody to dail 911 when you go hand to hand combat with them thorny ba#$%%ds.

Yeah I came out today with my share of stabs and scratches.

Iused to have some Black Locust trees and they had large sharp pointy spines.

John

I always thought the Honey locust were thornless (sweet) and the Black locust were thorny (black = bad).

It's listed as a "true bow wood" on another site.

'TRUE BOWWOODS= Assuming sound wood, proper design and good tillering, only the lowest SG species here might occasionally need light backing.'

LOCUST, black .69. Stronger in tension than compression. A flat-back design is fine, but a crowned-back, wide-belly design is ideal, as from a smaller diameter limb or trunk. This wood is more likely to fret and chrysal, but here there is variation between trees. Nature loves bowmakers. She knows it's hard to tiller a bow for best safety and speed, so she gave us the locust tree as teacher. If a locust bow develops clusters of frets in one or a few small areas this is locust's way of telling us we haven't tillered the bow well. The fretted areas were put under greater strain, the unfretted areas loafing . Someone may think they've tillered a bow perfectly, but in the case of locust, the bow will actually tell you if you have or not. A well tillered bow will either have no frets, or else small frets spread along almost the entire length of the limb. If a locust bow is tillered perfectly and still develops frets, this is locust's way of saying we haven't designed the bow properly for its weight, length and draw. The locust stave is a classroom.

LOCUST, honey .66 A little less dense than black locust.. One of the prettier woods. Its sapwood is about twice as thick as that of black locust. Thorns grown on both trunk and branches.

How is Honey locust for risers and laminations on fiberglass lam bows?

Honey Locust has thorns on the trunk..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_locust

Water Locust..

http://www.cirrusimage.com/tree_water_locust.htm

Black Locust

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_locust

Dustin gave some great info with the wikipedia links.  Thanks!  I've heard that honey locust can make a self bow, but it needs to be pretty wide and thin, even more so than black locust.  It should work well as a laminate tho and heartwood be lams would be nice looking.  Good luck.

When you need info on wood try this link

http://www2.fpl.fs.fed.us/TechSheets/HardwoodNA/hardcommon.html

I also have it linked from my site, have a look

http://onemississipp.googlepages.com/home

I have seen some honey locust here in south Arkansas that had so many thorns on the trunk that there was no way to even touch the bark with one finger.I had to cut one on my property last summer like that.There were so many thorns that I finally took the bucket of my tractor and pushed it to the burning pile.I worked on that log for a couple hours trying to get thorns off so I could do something with it and finally gave up.

Honey locust lam on left. I've sold a little,but cant remember who I sold it to.


                 

The only good thing about the thorny buggers is lams,firewood and deer really like the pods in winter!!

Seems like the trees with the thorns have something they are trying to protect. I think it may be themselves from bowyers..

Osage
Locust
Wild Pear
Ect.....

Does Honey Locust make good risers?

Howard Hill offers it in their bows.  I am going to order a reverse bamboo locust model soon.

Thanks Laddy

I have a Honey Locust in my yard that will be coming down soon,