Thanks for the reply Justin - well, I guess I'll start with a couple questions? I'll post some picts too to help explain -- maybe.
Seems that all the books talk about sealing the ends w/ paint or glue, I've done that. Some say not to do anything until they are "cured", others say rought it out first. Thoughts on this? I'm anxious..
![Smiley :)](http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
For the pictures, the first pict is of all the staves I cut the other day - the trees (vine maple - Central WA Cascades - East slopes) were cut ranging between 2" and 4" in diameter. Then I split them in 2/3's, keeping the larger piece which was the top side of the VM as it was growing - still trying to figure out this tension vs compression stuff. I used a bandsaw to make the cuts, I also cut the sides of each stave - thinking it would help rough out and help cure.
The way I cut them was to contour the growth pattern -- see the second photo (dotted line). I put a dot of ink at the 'point' of each growth ring, which showed me the center of the tree. But when marking out to cut the edges, I basically stayed with the contour of the outside edge and too 1/4" off - leaving me with a 2.5" wide roughed bow. If looking at it as if you were shooting the bow, it would look like a wiggly snake rather than a straight cut (make sense?). Would this be correct? or should I lay it out to cut a perfectly straight edges?? nothing seems to say exactly what to do here - so I made a best guess.
Third pic was to show the bow back, I left the bark on as its pretty hard to remove this time of year. What do I do here, scrape it down to the sap wood, no further? or try to get to a ring? Do I wait to let it 'cure' first?
Crud, I'm not really sure where to start here - but as I said before, the native americans didn't have the internet either -- maybe I'm making too much of this??
He'p?
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