Coppicing for bows

[BowEd]

Here's the method done here by many to coppice osage for nice straight fence posts.Trees cut 3 to 4 foot off from the ground.Then shoots or saplings come out.When seen by me I usually try to get a few sapling bows from this method being done.Pictured are 3 to 4 inch thick saplings a good 6' long for future use.Usually depending on conditions etc. every 10 years this can be done to keep a supply of posts or in my case bows around.
This method can be done with a variety of different trees.

[DC]

This works good for Hazel and Plum. I grew some Hazel to 2 1/2" in five years and the Plum I cut this last March was 2 1/4" in six years.

[hoosierf]

I’ve seen oaks grow shoots out of stumps and grow nicely. I wonder what other species will do it?

[BowEd]

Mullberry ,black locust,and ash I've seen too.

[PatM]

Up here you will see where they have cut Ash trees down along railroad lines and the stump sprouts  have turned into clumps of large trees.  Not sure what thee thinking is to remove one tree and replace it with 5 .

[BowEd]

We've got a product here called tordon that we put on tree stumps that are freshly cut to insure they don't stay alive.Sounds like the railroad people don't want to use it or.....it's their way of job security not using it.

[PatM]

Well they haven't cut the trees again for about 30 years so it's probably not that much of a job security thing.  Maybe the stump treatment doesn't meet environmental standards here.

 Could be the trees were  cut when they first put the railroad in.

[Hamish]

  I think if you coppiced selectively it could work. I wouldn't want to leave a trunk 3-4' high unless it already wasn't suitable for billets, or could have yielded nice clean full length stave/s. 

 I have seen wind blown over mature osage, send up new branches dead straight towards the sky, like a coppiced tree.

[upstatenybowyer]

Very cool Ed. If I was driving down the road and saw that hedge I'd have to just stop and drool a while. 

[Limbit]

Yes, mulberry will do the same. I've seen the same thing from trees that fall over but don't die. Someone on this site was talking about yew being grown on its side historically for bow harvesting...or was that just a theory? I can't remember now.

[Badger]

   During the middle ages Yew was actually a dominant species in many parts of the Alps.

[GlisGlis]

with elderberry bending a big sapling almost horizontal at a foot from ground (and blocking it in this position) will make it produce vertical straight branches

[BowEd]

PatM...I live in a very high food productive highly scrutinized area.Standards and precautions are some of the strictest in the world and I'm a retired farmer.I doubt whether it's an enviornmental standard thing.We're talking about 2 different types of ground.Productive ground and non productive ground.The product tordon is put onto the open cut top of the stump which kills the roots.Even a kerf 3/4" deep around a standing tree with tordon applied into the kerf will kill that tree.There are many ways to stop invasive species and this in one SAFE way of doing that.They cut trees down along railroad tracks here too but don't use the product tordon.
Hamish....I think what your referring to is when suckers reappear on the laid down trunk is that those suckers are just suckling off the mother trunks' moisture.In time they will die as the mother tree is dead too.A tree is really just a large water canteen.
These practices of coppicing have been done here for many many years.

[BowEd]

GliGls....I've seen large osage branchs growing horizontally too that will produce very nice vertical sapling type branches for nice bows that are growing horizonatally.We have elderberry but getting one thick and big enough can be difficult.
Coppicing practices produce many more nice straight sapling type bows than that though.

[DC]

Around here a lot of the forest is up to 100 year old second growth. When they logged out the Fir/Hem they knocked over a lot of Yew. These knocked over trees are still alive but laying on their side. They put up nice vertical suckers. I'll bet half of my Yew comes from these. It's not coppicing but it's close
Now they clear cut and take down everything. Some Yew will come back from the stump but I won't live long enough to see any of it. Yew is one of the few conifers that will sprout from the stump so we're benefiting from that.