Great looking little bow. Thing looks powerful in your hand. So thick!
Thanks Chuck for the info on Calocedrus. As soon as I read it I looked it up and BINGO! I have been trying to identify a huge tree in the courtyard of an apartment building (in Seattle) that was cut down and ran through a chipper
I managed to rescue from the woodsmen 6 or 7 large (4"+ dia) reflexed branches. I thought I was gettin juniper cause the tree looks like a juniper but the Mahogany colored heartwood (when green, after moisture leaves it becomes more pinkish brown) and the beautiful smell told me it wasn't juniper. It smells more like cedar incense (not cedar chest - ERC- smell). The wet sap was more like an oil or resin, not really sticky at all. When I dry heated a still green piece to reflex a tip, the moisture in the wood turned to liquid oil and mass amounts flowed down the wood with an almost blood or plasma colored. The bark is different from juniper also. More like western red cedar bark, it peels off in great wide long pieces and you can strip out the innermost bark (like WRC) for basket strips and I have a lot of it. Hope to moisten it (to make it a little more flexible), cut it into strips and use it for handle wraps on the bows I get from the wood. I have a couple of 6' highly reflexed staves with not a single knot or pin in the sapwood. Several shorter ones with no knots either. The heartwood is probably as dense as yew. And that heavenly smell
Do you think It should try using it without a backing with all that flawless back surface. I kind of thought of sinewing the shorter ones but the long ones may be ok. If you think about it, the 6'-7' pieces I have were the backstraps supporting 20' long-800lb horizontal (almost) branches so that sapwood should pretty strong, eh. The amount of natural reflex worries me more than anything. May be a bear to tiller.
And that poor beautiful tree ran through the chipper. Oh the Humanity! Such a waste of beautiful lumber (this was a 60' tree). I sure wish I could have saved more of it.
