standing dead wood?

[jham]

Hello everyone, been a while since I have worked on any bows but I'm back. I have made a few board bows, and have a few more boards I am about to work on, but I am wanting to cut some wood and try making from staves. My dad has a empty lot that has a good bit of trees on it I can cut, but mostly sweetgum and a few oaks but most are too knotty. I have several sweet gums I am going to cut down and see if I can get any usable staves out of, but there is one standing dead tree that I am wondering if I could use sooner than the rest. The bottom 10 ft or so looks fine, but the top is full of woodpecker holes. Do you think it would be worth trying to get something out of the bottom of the tree, or would it be too dangerous as far as rot, etc?

[dylanholderman]

Wait for other opinions but I would say no, my personal experience with dead standing wood has not been good unless it was Osage.

[George Tsoukalas]

I never used sweet gum.
I would not use any standing dead tree except maybe black locust and osage.
Jawge

[jham]

From what I understand, sweet gum is a marginal bow wood, but as long as you make it a little wider it will make a decent shooter.

[osage outlaw]

Sounds like fire wood to me.

[Pat B]

No standing dead wood except osage and locust, like George. I've heard of sweet gum bows. Only problem is sweet gum is a bear to split. Worse than elm.
 I'd suggest you do a good tree survey of the property and see just what is there. Could be some other bow woods there. Where do you live?

[Joec123able]

Osage, locust and maybe Mulberry would be the only woods I'd trust.

[jham]

I'm down in south georgia. The lot does have a few cherry trees but they are up near the road so it will be harder to cut them. Other than that it is mostly pine, sweet gum, a few twisty oaks, and mulberry. I do have an eye on a oak sapling that I think will make a good bow or 2 in a few years. I will probably end up just cutting some sweet gum for now and try to make it out to my uncles farm a few hrs away and see what I can find there, hopefully I can find a hickory or 2. I had a nice piece of holly cut, but before I got around to splitting it it was cut up for a firewood rack... grrr

[Dakota Kid]

I'd cut a mulberry before a sweet gum. I would cut both don't get me wrong, but the mulberry would come first. You can never have too many staves laying around and I enjoy trying different woods I haven't tried before. If the wood ends up being no good, the practice still is.

[WillS]

Does anybody know whether you can use standing dead wood as a belly laminate, and put something solid on as a backing?

I've got loads of standing dead yew that won't work as self bows, but I'm wondering if backing with ash/hickory/elm would turn it into a bow?

[Eric Krewson]

This is all standing dead osage from one huge tree, not a decent bow stave in the whole lot. I don't know why, the wood was chalky.

[PatM]

There is probably some rhyme or reason as to why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
 Perhaps what time of year the tree actually expired?

  Seems like the heartwood type woods would be more resistant considering that heartwood is basically standing dead already.

[osage outlaw]

That's weird Eric.  I've had really good luck cutting standing and laying dead osage trees.  Maybe whatever killed that tree damaged the wood somehow?

[FilipT]

Wow, imagine what gold mine that osage would have been, I can't even fathom how many staves you could get out of it.

[BowEd]

A heck of a lot of wood there Eric.Sorry to see that for your efforts sake.Good fire wood then I guess.