Went tree hunting today. I'm wanting to do something other than board bows and I was given the opportunity to take a tree from some land in exchange for a bow. We went out a few weeks later than planned and some of the more interesting trees were already losing their leaves. The tree below was very tall and the leaves were way at the top; I could barely tell what they looked like. We found no nuts on the ground and the leaves were serrated. I guessed elm.
Cut a piece:
It took us a long time to split it out. The grain was super stringy. I broke my sledge hammer. The felled tree got caught in another tree. It was a comedy of errors. In the end, we split a portion of it. Below are the pics of what we split. We lost a lot of time and had to stop. The bark is left on at this point. They are 8+ feet long. about 12-13" wide and 5.5 -5.6" thick.
The smaller piece on the far left came off very strangely. I can probably get a bow out of it. It's pretty thin. I have some concerns that I hope you can help out.
1. I didn't debark it. Can it wait a while to do that? We've put it in a machine shed on some boards. At the latest, I plan on going back next weekend to debark and
finish splitting. If I need to, I can go debark it tomorrow night. Haven't worked with elm before so I'm a little nervous.
2. What's the best strategy for splitting these. I naturally want to maximize the number of staves but splitting this stuff is so difficult I'm afraid of
cutting it too close and having a chunk pulled out of a potential stave. Do i just split each of these halves? In thirds? In fourths?
This portion of the tree is just one of three possible retrievable sections. The rest of the tree is hanging in the forest. We're going to have to go out next Saturday and try and retrieve it. My friend is going to go out and coat the exposed tree tomorrow to help stop checking. Should get two more similar sections, if a little smaller and a little shorter, that is, if the tree is okay by next weekend. Thanks for you help.
Aidan