Russian olive log

[Tyke]

Me and pyro Found a sweet 73"x6" log thats perfectly straight hopefully it splits good. does anyone know what to watch out for in russian olive ?

[Tyke]

Debarked.

[Tyke]

Thanks fo doing all the work joe

[Tyke]

Perfect

[JoJoDapyro]

Man that wood is hard. I hope it is one of the harder ones, or I may have to start sawing them in half.

[mikekeswick]

You lucky guys! That's some stave!

[JoJoDapyro]

It was dead of course, but the beauty of that is that it is dry. A few grub tracks on the very outer sap wood, and a few grubs still doing their thing when I stripped the bark, but solid, and harder to split than I thought.

[DarkSoul]

It was dead of course

Errrr.....why is that "of course"?  You generally must not use dead wood for making bows. Insects, fungi and bacteria will start to degenerate the wood as soon as the tree is killed. Some woods are very durable and are still usable as 'standing dead': yew, osage and black locust. But Russian olive...I can't find any reports on its durability. I would highly question this woods strength based on the fact that grubs already started eating it.

[JoJoDapyro]

I just meant that it was dry. It wasn't on the ground, It had broken off the tree, except for some of the bark, and fallen on a sapling. So none of it was on the ground. None of the outer wood was spongy, and from what I can tell so far none of the grubs got any deeper than the very outer ring. It is very hard, and still very strong. I guess time will tell. As I have never split a stave before this, I don't know how hard it usually is. The first split was very difficult, I used 3 splitting wedges, a hatchet and an 8 pound sledge hammer. All of this is a learning experience for Tyke and I. Finding usable wood is tough, as really all the wood we have at our disposal is Russian olive (that generally doesn't grow straight), Siberian Elm (that is in abundance), White Oak (I don't know much about its durability, as well as not very straight or large).

Thanks for the info on standing dead. I am new at this and any info that anyone passes on is greatly appreciated.

[JW_Halverson]

Maybe you will get lucky and this log was not rotting where you found it.  After all, your streak is already stratospherically lucky....straight for over 6 ft, no twist, few enough knots that it split straight???  You shouldn't have wasted all your luck on this stave, you shoulda bought a lottery ticket.  The $500 million bucks would buy you a lot of really high quality staves.....ALREADY SPLIT!

Keep posting progress!

[JoJoDapyro]

Very true. The only Russian olive I have seen that is straight for over 2 feet grows horizontal to the ground. The grain seems to be very straight. Maybe it is not twisted due to it growing in a grove of other tall trees, and was sheltered from the wind, and due to being in the grove also grew straight as an attempt to get to the sun? Be very true, there are a lot of variables that went right to get what we have.