splitting stave from a living tree

[ravenbeak]

In TBB1 there is a short mention about being able to split a stave from a living tree by making a cut at each end of the desired stave and leaving the piece on the tree to season/ dry.  Just wondering who has some experience with this,  any help would be appreciated, 

I found a tree and made my two cuts,  I am interested in how long you left the stave attached to the tree,  how was it to split out,  start from top or bottom?

thanks,

jamie

[Pat B]

Jamie, I've never tried this but I did read about it. The stave won't completely dry because it will still take on moisture from the tree by capillary action but will release most of it through the cut ends.  It should however stabilize a bit so it won't "react" too much when split out.
  You can probably start at either end with a wedge to get it to seperate. I have luck with smaller diameter logs by spilittring them from the middle of the stave out to each end. It seems to split more evenly that way.

[crooketarrow]

   I'm sure if this could be the same.But I had 2 friends that took O'sage staves truck loads to Dention hill for a few different years.After they cut a truck load to split and take up .They go around a pick out next year trees to get seasoned wood.For themselfs they built all wood osage recurves.They saw around the base but try to leave enough wood so it would stand.And theyed leave in stand for 2 years then go back and cut seasonse wood. He said the trick was to cut enough wood so it would die but stand .He said it did'nt matter if the wind blew it over the cut it that year.
   That was over 10 years ago.And he was a building full of staves dozzens and dozzens left over from those days. They no longer build bows so I can just pick what I want cheap or trade.

[Pat B]

All you have to do is cut through the cambium of the tree to kill it. That is the only living portion of the trunk; a very thin layer between the bark and the sapwood. Even with this done water still moves up through the "wood" of the trunk. It still has to be dried out before building bows with it.
  I cut lots of firewood. Even dead standing trees are full of moisture and take a while to dry, maybe not as long as a living tree but it is still a waiting game.

[loefflerchuck]

I have read about this method a few times. It was used extensively in the great basin by many tribes. There are still old living juniper trees with stave removal scars in Nevada, Utah, and Grand county Colorado. From what I have read they used a long lever in the top cut to pry the partially seasoned stave from the tree. It is written that after the bottom cut the stave was left in the tree for about a year.
 I will be trying this too. Let me know how it goes.

[aznboi3644]

I plan to do this on a few big trees at my parents house...I've been eyeing a few tree trunks with grain straight as hell.

I'm just worried about the split running off and just splitting out a long wedge from the tree.

[ravenbeak]

thanks for the input,   

My main goal is to not kill the tree,  I have two trees with cuts in top and bottom,  I plan to wait as long as my patience will last,  likely few months,  hopefully a year.

If it works,  what an amazing concept to remove a stave without killing the tree.

I would be interested to hear from someone who has done it successfully,   anyone out there?

[bubbles]

Did anyone have any success attempting this?

[PatM]

Don't kid yourself thinking that cutting around a trunk is going to immediately kill the tree and start the seasoning process. You would have to do a wide cut so that water doesn't just bridge the cut and get sucked up the trunk. I once cut all the way around a HHB trunk and left only a tiny piece in the center when the blade of my handsaw buckled and snapped. I had to leave the tree standing and wasn't able to get back to it for a full six months. Cut it in February and got back to it in August.
 The tree was in full leaf despite being completely girdled.
 I would only attempt anything like this with a type of wood that is decay resistant.

[DuBois]

I tried it on an ERC but just ended up with a half stave. I didn't get underneath the wood enough and it split. I only left it cut a month or so. Probably should have been a year or better?

[Dean Marlow]

I am not sold on this way to season staves . Around me a dead tree standing will be full of worms in a couple of years. Doesn't make any difference what kind of tree it is.If the cuts are done to make it split straight it won't make any difference. Grain is grain and that is where the split will follow.

[JonW]

If you can get a copy, there is a DVD called "Full Circle." Can't remember the guys name but he shows how to do this on a large ERC tree.

[bubbles]

I'm not even really thinking about the seasoning part. More just, could I walk up to a huge diameter
 (straight grained) tree and split a single stave out, and take it home to season?

[Wiley]

Bubbles, you probably could with enough wedges, and a crow bar.

I'm still convinced that coppicing is the more sustainable forestry practice, and less likely to kill a tree if it is a tree that responds to coppicing. Wait till winter, cut the tree down near its base. When spring time comes around, a bunch of shoots will come out of the stump, these shoots will grow into clusters of sapling like trees. The shoots can be pruned to however many you want to turn into trees.

So you cut down 1 tree, turn it into staves. Come back in number of years, and that one tree has become 10 or 15 shoots that have grown into bow wood in much less time than the original tree took to grow large enough. Ideally you do a coppicing every winter so that in 10-20 years or so you have various stages of growth you can harvest from. When the shoots are large enough for bows, cut them all back to the stump in winter, in the spring the process will begin again. Trees harvested in this manner can survive for as long as their is enough nutrients in the ground. A coppiced woodland is good for the forest ecology, and about as sustainable as cutting down trees can be.

For what it's worth I think that osage, black loctus, HHB, maple, mulberry, pecan, oak, hickory, and I am sure many our other native bow woods can be coppiced in this manner. Traditionally this was done a quarter acre at a time, and most of it was cut down to allow sunlight to get to the shoots. Something to think about when your harvesting your bow and firewood.

[Pappy]

I agree Wiley,to many big trees in a woods is bad for everything form young
trees to wildlife,it's a renewal resource just like any crop,just takes longer for it to get ripe. Back to the subjest,I have heard of doing that and think it could be pretty easily done on the right kind of tree. Probably not on Osage or Elm or any tough splitting trees but on oak ,ERC,hickory it should be pretty easy to do.
   Pappy