Author Topic: Help me keep my firewood pile small!  (Read 1258 times)

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Offline Accipiter

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Help me keep my firewood pile small!
« on: January 02, 2013, 05:18:31 pm »
So I recently harvested a dew staves and have been working to get them roughed out before I leave for a trip to Ecuador. hopefully by the time I get back in march they'll be ready to go. Unfortunately, due to some overzealousness on my part, I didn't cut the cleanest staves, and 2 split spirally. Being a novice, I'm not quite sure what to do at this point, so I'd like to see what your opinions on these three are:


From top to bottom: Serviceberry with moderate limb twist, ocean spray with a side limb (the pictures below have some details on that) and vine maple with fairly severe limb twist.


Heres the limb that used to be attached. I cut this one out of a thicket so I didn't even see it until after I'd cut the bottom. :-\  Side note, this limb split cleanly up from the main split on the ocean spray without me even coming close to it with the wedge, OS is crazy stuff .


Close-up of the grain, seems to run fairly strait once you get towards the center.

All three of these staves are ideally going to become short-ish bendy handle bows, if I can get them laid out correctly. Is it possible to fix the limb twist of the serviceberry and VM by steaming and/or clamping? Ignore it? Also, how safe do you think that OS stave will be? I'm planning on keeping lots of wood in that spot, but should I back it as well, or just scrap it? Thanks for your ideas, I'd love to have some bows instead of some firewood!

Offline Pat B

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Re: Help me keep my firewood pile small!
« Reply #1 on: January 02, 2013, 05:57:29 pm »
The tree grew in a twist and there is no way to split a stave like that without it splitting twisted.
Make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes!    Pat Brennan  Brevard, NC

Offline Accipiter

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Re: Help me keep my firewood pile small!
« Reply #2 on: January 02, 2013, 06:18:38 pm »
Bummer. Is there any way to 'un-twist' splitting?

Offline spyder1958

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Re: Help me keep my firewood pile small!
« Reply #3 on: January 03, 2013, 10:54:02 am »
jawge has a good method in his build along site.

Offline Accipiter

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Re: Help me keep my firewood pile small!
« Reply #4 on: January 03, 2013, 01:17:07 pm »
Oh, wow, that is a super useful site! Thanks for the tip.