I bought this wood from a guy several years ago who used to make bows some 30 years ago. He had a brother in-law that lived in Southern Ontario who had access to some Osage and offered to cut a tree for him. Most of the wood was not very usable since the guy who cut the wood didn't know anything about making bows but there was this piece that was decent. It was probably about 20 years old when I got it and that was 10 years ago so it was pretty well seasoned. I was recently contacted by a guy further south of me, I had built a couple bows for him and one for his daughter but his daughter had outgrown her bow. I had made Rob an Osage Mollegabet last year and his daughter had tried his out and liked it so he wanted me to make her one like his, a bit lighter though. I pulled out this stave and started to work it down. It looked very clean after taking the bark off with only a couple pin knots on one side but as I started to take the sapwood off I discovered this
And that evolved into this on the belly
Essentially what seems to have happened is some bark got trapped inside the wood and the tree kept growing covering it up with new wood. The stave had other small issues, such as a kink on the other limb. I took most of that out with localized steam bending. I didn't do any heat-treating to the bow. The wood turned out to be quite good taking hardly any set at all, admittedly at 67" long for a 26" draw it is a bit overbuilt. That does not affect how it shoots though. Performance is excellent. The bow is a left hand bow and pulls 47# @ 26". The limbs are 1 1/2" wide with 9" long levers
Here's some more pics
P.S. I recently told a guy that Ontario Osage was not as good as Osage from cross border, this piece of wood made a liar out of me
