Seasoning wood

[adb]

I've had bad luck trying to force dry wood. I let staves season naturally (regardless of species) for a minimum of 1 year before working.

[Badger]

  art, making up some arrows from the scraps might very well be the best way to test it out, you could store more in a smaller place and have a lot more control over a lot of things. You could check the spine once a year as well as the recovery. This would be a good test. It might take a while but it would solve an old arguement once and for all. My feelings are about 5 to 10 years for a real thourough seasoning. It may vary quite a bit with species.

[Buckeye Guy]

You folks don't have to convince me !
I will take ten year old and over anytime !

Chris
 when I read your post I thought I had all ready replied then realized it was you !!!
 
Art
I agree it is to bad Tim did not make arrows ,so much to learn from them !
I have tried to talk thru the arrow complexities with Steve Davis (a engineer and a smart fellow , 2 things that don't seem to be found together )he keeps telling me there is more going on in the the bow than the arrow and I say he he needs to make more arrow shafts !
Steve
Hope you find someone to take the othr side in this one !
Have fun !
Guy

[Badger]

  Guy, like a lot of things in bow making. Not really about taking sides as much as it is realizing a lot of the old ways were established for a good reason. Maybe not all of them but it sure pays to stay open minded. Looking at ancient designs from any culture you want to pick out clearly shows that humans did a good job designing bows long before the internet. They usually worked with a smaller number of materials and became very familiar with how they work best.

[Joec123able]

All these drying times you guys have vary on thickness. I usually rough a bow down to where it bends alittle while green which allows it to dry much faster lets face it life's to short to wait for wood to dry! I dang sure don't feel like waiting a decade to make one bow when I can season a piece 8 months and it will still be a beast of a bow and last decades

[Josh B]

Lol!  Joe your response reminded me of story my grandpa told me years ago.  Its the old  story of an old bull and a young bull standing on a hill overlooking an entire herd of heifers.  The young bull says "lets run down there and breed one of those heifers!"  The old bull shakes his head and says " how about we WALK down there and breed em all."  The moral of the story is that the young bulls idea is good, but the old bull, having learned patience, has a much better way to get far superior results.  I understand rushing things a bit when your building stave to stave.  However, if you really want to improve the quality of your craft and your bows, be sure to set some staves aside to season.  When those staves have seasoned well, you will have seasoned as a bowyer at the same time.  By then you will be very happy that you decided to plan ahead.  The difference between dried and seasoned can't be explained, only experienced.  Josh

[PatM]

If you routinely cut wood when you see outstanding pieces and don't rush your builds or build more bows than you are likely to use, you'll quite soon find yourself sitting on a stash of staves that are seasoned.
 I work almost all of them down to close to bow dimensions  but then then they will sit like that for years.
 If you leave a half log of ironwood for five years and then try to reduce it, you will quickly see and feel the difference between dry and seasoned.

[burn em up chuck]

   this is very cool,

             chuck

[akswift]

Quite a few who have posted agree there is a difference between dry and seasoned. Is time the only way to season? Perhaps there might be certain conditions of storage that help the seasoning process along. Once equilibrium M.C. is reached, and the wood is dry, does anyone treat their staves or arrow stock with any special care or hold them in a controlled environment to help seasoning? I have no doubt that archer1 speaks from experience, but would you be so kind to as to elaborate on the difference that one could expect from a dried arrow and a properly seasoned one?

[rossfactor]

I wonder what happens to elasticity over time. 

Especially pertinent for underbuilt bows, or bows that have been design with no exttra fat.  If you design a bow on a razors edge, and elasticity drops over time this could mean trouble. Especially if draw weight increases due to wood shrinkage.  Woods elasticity comes from its lignin matrix, and I have no information about how lignin ages.... Its a polymer and I think many synthetic polymers get brittle with age....

Gabe

[mikekeswick]

Steve, I've mentioned many times over the years on these boards that you'll learn more about bow wood from arrow making than anything else. Something Tim Baker knew absolutely nothing about. And I'm sure you remember mine and Tim's discussion on this matter of seasoning over on PP some years ago. A real shame he couldn't see anyone's point of view but his own!

So, if anyone thinks that quick dry is as good as seasoned wood, then cut you some green billets, let 'em dry out real good, and make some arrows instead of bows. You're going to be sorely disappointed..............Art B

I've made hundereds and hundreds of shafts from all sorts of timbers and have to agree with you entirely. I've got some pitch pine that is over 150 years old....thems some special shafts. even at 5/16ths they are still over 75# spine. My best flight arrows have been made from this wood.
The beauty of making arrows is that they get spine tested and weighed at a given diameter. Giving you quite a precise set of stats.
A bows performance however comes down to many things and most importantly you will never make two bows that are absolutely identical in every respect eg, weight, draw weight, length, width, thickness, crown, time bent during tillering, both limbs of even strength all the way through tillering....etc etc etc and this means that it is almost impossible to do a fair, equal and fully objective test on quick dried wood and long dried wood.
There is a whole lot of subjectivity going on with a bows performance....and that is all that will be put forward with this discussion. I'm not knocking it i'm just saying.  Also the placebo effect is in action.   
However I firmly believe that very good bows can be made from wood that was green a few weeks ago because i've done it 

[Badger]

      Mike, no doubt you can make good bows from green wood, 90% of the bows I make are cut the same year.But everyonce in a while I will get an old stave from someone that had it sitting around for 10 years or so and it does seem to improve with age. My biggest question is do the bows continue to season the same way as they hang on the bow rack for several years, again i think yes but can't prove it.

      As for arrows, most homes here are built with doug fir, whenever I see an old building comming down I will look through the lumber for old growth clear doug fir, makes great small diameter arrows.

[Badger]

   One bit of evidence I might have is the bow I set the world broadhead record with this year. Every year I have shot it, it has continued to improve its distance and every year I have to scrape it down just a tad to make the 50# weight limit.

[BowEd]

Well I think I should keep my eye out for some old old fence posts of hedge in my country.If a person is lucky some of those can be at least 20 years old or scrounge around through all of these bulldoze piles that have been there a long long time from making ponds.You have to put up with all of the weather checks and bug holes then but it would be worth it.Trouble with these bulldoze piles is if there is a post worthy post being pushed into a pile the farmer picks those out and leaves some very very knarly stuff.I've had to fetch my little ambitious jack russel from those bulldoze piles a few times.
I know from making dogwood arrows that they stay straight longer after a 6 month seasoning.

[artcher1]

First thing you'll notice about arrows made from fresh stock is their erratic flight/unresponsive and somewhat sluggish nature. Second, getting them straight and keeping them that way is usually an issue. Hardwoods seem to be more problematic that the pines. Sure, dynamics are different between bows and arrows, but the materials are the same, and some of the issues are transferable I'm sure.

You hear a lot of folks say that so and so wood is no good for arrows because they won't stay straight. Or that particular wood isn't very responsive or makes for a sluggish arrow. And then others phrase the virtues of these very same woods. Why? Because some are getting shafts that are well seasoned and some with little seasoning time.

Personally, I'd rather have very well seasoned wood for both bows and arrows. But I'm not going to let a little time stand in my way of making a bow if I need one. And I'm sure most here share that sentiment. Arrow shafts you really don't have a choice if you want the very best results.

A good subject to study further, and a good discussion all around..............Art