questions about 2.5" cherry and plum staves

[ekalavya]

Is it okay just to seal the cuts with wood glue for 2.5" diameter plum and cherry staves?
Do I have to remove the bark immediatly?

After going to the woods i found a quite nice cherry which would not make it too long
so i cut it with the saw and the machete and got three nice 2.5 ' pieces.
At home i used wood glue to seal the cuts.

All the staves were not more than 2.5" or 3" in diameter.

I heard rumours that insects and bugs gonna ruin my staves when I forget to
remove the bark. Is that true?

[Badger]

  They will get to the bark pretty quick, I would remove it and seal the back.

[Limbit]

You need to be VERY careful drying plum wood. It will check very badly. Yes, bugs will eat the heck out of the bark straight away, but in the case of plum, it might be good to leave the bark on and just seal over the bark to keep it from going crazy checking. Plum is great bow wood! Cherry, you need to be careful with...unless it were to be black cherry.

[bowandarrow473]

Plum is an awesome bow wood! Cherry is too except it isn't very tension safe and that could be a problem with a smaller stave. I would strip the bark and seal the back.

[ekalavya]

Was quite busy because I had to remove the bark from three staves.

Well, the plum is worm wood ... or at least I guess so ... more than a hundred holes and worms
says hello from time to time.

Were the worms or their eggs still there in the wood or did the came later?

The cherry was a fresh cut form yesterday and I remove the bark too with a draw knife ...
it's a pain with a cheap cutter ... yeah , and it works even without a vice.

I used linseed oil for the stave and for sealing wood glue and later oil and beeswax, because
the wood glue takes so long to try and become transparent.

The cherry turns kinda orange and brown until you remove the bast completly. Well,
that makes the job a lot easier.

So i plan to repeat the oiling up to five or six times. Maybe the wood will soak the oil.

How long may I expect to wait until they are dry enough and ready to be split ?

[PlanB]

re. glue on ends -- if you used a water based glue, it certainly will take long to dry, as the wood was presumably green, and moisture can wick out the ends........

reccomendation-- .for cut ends, nothing is as water and vapor proof as wax. Here in the U.S. paraffin wax is easy to find for canning, In the UK "paraffin" means something else....what we call "kerosene" here. I don't know what it would be called where you are. Candle wax is similar and would work, too.

It's super fast to apply, I just put  chunk into a small soup can, and set it in a small saucepan with an inch of water in it to serve as a double boiler. Heat gently a couple minutes until the wax is just melted and brush on the wood ends. No waiting for glue to dry. (Never heat wax directly over an open flame, always use a double boiler.)

Plywood potable water tanks have been built with a paraffin wax coating on the inside in boats. Paint is nowhere near as water (and vapor) proof. Wax is used for canning for the same reason. It's a perfect sealant against moisture.

[ekalavya]

@PlanB

well, because i still have some bee hives i used my own wax melted by sun out of the old
black brown comb.

Usually when using wet wood the wax does not go inside and this way you can make
queen cells with a 3/8" diameter stick.
Don't know if this is required for sealing but i wanted the wax to go inside a bit , so i rubbed
it on and used a hair dryer to make it soft and then rubbed it in with oil.
For my bee boxes i used oil and wax mixtures ... after i decided just oil would do it anyway...
because it does not hurry.
i got a hot air pistole too ... so maybe first doing as you do and then using the pistole so that
the wax goes deeper .... not really hot just the lowest temperature possible with it ... guess that
was 200°C

[ekalavya]

Would it be of any use to make squared timber out of the wormy plum stave?

I mean , could I probably safe the wood this way or is it a waste of time because the
worms have eaten them through the core already by now.

I also thought of soaking plum staves in lye or borax water to kill the worms ...
although i am not sure that's right , because no one ever mentioned that.

Also , when soaking the stave , how's that best done ... buying some plastic tube
and putting the stave inside ..... actually i got no bath tube at home ...

Will some cheap salt like normal cooking salt or calcium chloride do the job as well ?

Also I am familiar with producing CO2 from soda , which is very easily done.
I could give the stave a CO2 bath as well.

[PlanB]

I was just talking about sealing cut end grain, since that was your first post question. I'm sure straight melted beeswax would have sealed faster and more completely than the wood glue, which took a long time when you tried it.

[DC]

I just use shellac to seal the ends. It doesn't mind the wet and seems to dry quick enough. Was the cherry dead when you cut it? Hundreds of wormholes sounds like firewood to me.

[ekalavya]

@DC

The cherry was alright --- not a single worm hole , but the plum had that many wormholes.

The plum i was finding on a waste place for cutted wood and greens. Could have said
the time to take it home.

Maybe next time I remove a small strip of the bark - the whole length of the stave -
and then when i find a single hole , i drop and leave it .

@PlanB
anyway, wax is an option .... there's also that special tree's wax(Baumwachs) which is used
for sealing cuts of branches on a tree
i got some recipes for that
anway, i guess there are a lot of substances and means to seal tree cuts for drying staves

wax cooked with oil gives a shoe polish like substance , which can also be used for shoe polishing ,
and most likely for sealing the cuts of staves

anyway, thanks for mentioning .... posts and threads are a help for quite a lot of people

[DC]

Sorry, plum. Anyway, any wood you find on a pile is questionable a best. Unless it's a highly rot resistant wood like Osage or Yew heartwood don't waste your time, they break down very quickly.

[ekalavya]

okay , i stay with the fresh cuts ....
just gotta learn how to dry them without cracks and to much bending/turning to all sides

i heard of a methode of working out the stave up to that that you can bend it backwards
a bit in wet stage so that you can string it ... it should then bend and get a reflex while
drying ... don't know if it is right ... i just picked it up somewhere

about bending woods ... i not even managed to straighten arrow shafts with heat ...
but i read that it was possible to even bend in a "set back" in an almost finished bow