Made it back from the sawmill. A lot more goes into getting a good quartersawn board of osage than I expected. We started with this beautifully straight piece of osage:
Mr. Crawford sawed half way through that straight log and about the time we got to the center where the quartersawn wood would begin we found a huge defect right in the center of the log. We turned it on its side and I got 4 narrow rift sawn boards out of it, but nothing quartersawn.
So, we tried a new log. Interestingly, because of it's shape there was about 4" of quartersawn wood on left edge of the second board down. We got 3 boards we could get 4" of quartersawn out of before the log began to show a huge defect (and a huge carpenter ant nest) in the center. It appears that each osage log is an adventure to saw.
Those boards are 9' long, hope to get 2 6' 1x2s and 2 3' 1x2s from each board to make bows from. The 4 rift sawn boards are 1x4x6'. Interesting how the wood has a beautiful brown color when freshly cut (and very wet). Within 10 minutes or so it begins to turn yellow and in a half hour or so the wood is completely the beautiful yellow I'm used to. We had one problem with the saw that caused the board to have a bulge in one spot. Consequently he took 2 3/16th cuts to even it up. Those came home with me as backing strips. Maybe tomorrow in the light I can get pictures of the wood I brought home.
I also brought home 15 - 50 year old fence posts. They are heavily weathered but very hard and solid. Hope to splice them into staves for bows. We'll see how that goes.
It wasn't cheap or quick, but it was fun and interesting.
George
