Serviceberry help/opinions.

[steve b.]

This is my first with this wood.  The tree was down with some rot in the center in spots, 3 weeks ago.  I debarked, roughed it out, and started drying it.  There was a lot of sap wood and I debated as I continued working it what I was going to do with it.  There is actually three distinct layers with the outer being yellowish, the inner being pinkish, and the center whitish. 
The heartwood was more stringy than the yellow so I decided to leave the yellow on the non working parts, leave 1/8" or so of the white, and make a bow.

Its starting to flex now so I'll put it in the drybox for at least a week and then start tillering.

It is 66", 1 3/4" wide at the fades, with almost 7" of reflex.  I will back it with rawhide at a minimum but began thinking about sinew, knowing I would possibly lose more the the heartwood than I wanted.
I could thin the sapwood even more and then sinew or just leave it as is and back with rawhide.

Or........?  Any input would be appreciated.

[steve b.]

.

[Danzn Bar]

seal it ...be patient...let er dry.........
DBar

[sumpitan]

I build a lot of serviceberry bows, since the tree's an introduced runaway pest here, and a super bow wood at that. I never chase a ring or back serviceberry, and I've never had a tension failure with it, no matter how high the crown was. I haven't built any with a 7-inch reflex, though. I shoot for app. two inches of reflex before tillering, achieved by cutting the stave off the tension side of the trunk and freeform air drying, occasionally tying down the unruly ones to keep the reflex at a manageable level. Serviceberry is so dense it dries slowly, about twice as long as the lower-density species I use. Ends up bone hard, too.

My serviceberry bows are sapwood throughout; on healthy trees the heartwood is apparent only as a drier, therefore whiter zone in the freshly-felled tree's cross-section, with the wet, thick sapwood dominating. After getting down to around 15 mm thickness at midlimb on the finished bows, what non-differentiated heartwood there was is gone, anyway. Low set, high cast and durability with all sapwood.

Tuukka

[Springbuck]

Sumpitan is right.  I live peretty far south for bigger serviceberry, and I get lots of longm skinny shoots.  The grain can twist and roll, and if I stick tot he crown it barely matters, except I have to watch for tools like a spokeshave digging in too much in spots.  Biggest stave I ever had was a 3"x 66" piece.  On stuff that little, the heartwood is usually just a streak running down the middle of the belly.  The sapwood often turns a really light yellow brown as it dries, and I can't tell a lot of difference between heart and sapwood.    It's really flexible, too.

  On the little saplings and branches available to me, splitting it is dumb, and drawknifing almost as bad.  I just saw it to reduce it and go to rasps and scrapers.

[steve b.]

Good info, thanks guys.
The grain on this spiraled around and I fully expected the stave to turn into a pretzel as it dried, but it never moved. 
I didn't bend test it  but one reason I removed sapwood was that it appeared less stringy or fiberous than the heartwood.  I can dampen it and then it scrapes off like mud.  The belly comes off in fibers.
So this is interesting.  I'll have to build another from just the sap and compare them.

Also, I split this from the compression side of the log and it seems to have gained reflex as it dried.  Need to understand that better too........