dark section in osage

[Marks]

My stave I'm working on has a dark section in it about 6" long and half way down the lower limb. I searched and saw found compliments on darker osage staves. They said the darker staves are more dense. Is that what is going on with this stave?

[Marks]

[Badly Bent]

Hard to say from the picture. My experience with osage is that a stave that is dark along its entire length seems to be
denser wood to me. I've had a few with small areas of the darker wood that had laminar separation problems between
the growth rings in those areas. If that were the case with yours though you would notice it on the edge of the bow.
Also the wood would be kinda flaky there too. Comes from water seeping between the rings I think.
Not saying this is what your stave has, just don't remember seeing that isolated dark area in a osage stave myself where there wasn't punky wood. There are guys on here that have seen alot more osage than me though maybe they would know. I'd continue with making the bow to find out. Hope it works for ya.

[Joec123able]

Yes it definetly seems darker Osage is denser that's for sure most of the Osage I've worked was light colored but I have some Osage I cut here in Iowa and it is naturally very dark and seems much harder to work then light colored Osage

[toomanyknots]

Yes it definetly seems darker Osage is denser that's for sure most of the Osage I've worked was light colored but I have some Osage I cut here in Iowa and it is naturally very dark and seems much harder to work then light colored Osage

I second this too. Most of the osage I cut is "normal" as well, but I cut a piece in the hills of Kentucky once that was very dark and dense. It was funny, it was like none of the osage up there grew that big, it was all pretty small diameter, it was weird. The stave had a lot of reflex and didn't wanna give any up. That was when I had just started messing around with making bows, and I had started in on it after only one week of drying! And it still didn't take any set. I had it bending out to 26" or so probably. I went to string it and the string stretched so much my fingers got stuck in between the string and the bow,  . It was not cool at all, lol. Ended up blowing up due to my shabby ring chasing. 

EDIT: Although your piece OP looks like red streaks, which are still good things in my book. I get a lot of osage with red streaks, usually closer to the pith of the tree.

[blackhawk]

Looks sound enough from what I can see...but ya won't know till ya make it or break it I've seen discolorations along growth rings before...as long as the wood still "feels" the same and sound it should be ok