osage stave coloration.

[superdav95]

Hey guys im gonna throw out a question to all you osage boys.  what do you make of this stave that i recently acquired?  The color changes in the heartwood.  love to hear some thoughts as to what may have caused this coloration variation in the heartwood.  the middle handle area of the stave does not appear to have this as much or at all.  Thoughts???

[Selfbowman]

Interesting stave. Try not to violate the liner rings . I seems that it affects the tension on the back when I have done that. Nice stave!

[Muskyman]

That’s strange looking. Is it long enough to cut a 1/4 inch off it to see what it looks like there. I’ve had some with darker rings but not as dark as the one right under the sapwood on that stave. Often wondered if the darker ones were better or not. Hope someone has a good answer for ya about this. I’ve harvested some that was laying on the ground that had some darker color like that on it but just on the side and not the entire heartwood ring.

[Hamish]

It is strange, I haven't seen osage like this before. I have seen osage where the heartwood hasn't changed evenly, patchy sections skipping several rings and remaining sapwood at the time of cutting. Yours has a dark ring and then several pale heartwood rings(though distinctly heartwood, not sapwood)

It's hard to tell from the side photo's whether the strange colour change of heartwood evenly follows the entire stave?

It's still osage and its probably going to make a good bow, so I wouldn't be too worried if it was a stave I was working on. Just keep an eye on it for any unusual changes in the early stages of tillering.

Worse case scenario use the normal heartwood under the unusual stuff, if it can give you enough meat to make a bow.

[Pat B]

Looks like insect of disease damage that the tree outgrew to me. You'll have to investigate whether it is viable or not.

[Selfbowman]

Hamish I’m with you on this one. All though depending on how dense the lighter is. It might be interesting to see a light one on the back and darker on the belly.

[superdav95]

Thanks guys.  I don’t have the access to Osage like I do other white woods so I don’t want to waist good Osage or even medium quality Osage.  I’ve never seen anything like this.  It dose it appear to run the entire length of the stave which leads me to think some sort of disease that got to the tree which it recovered from.  The bark looks normal too and doesn’t look like it suffered any weird damage or wind damage or anything.  Anyway I’ll let it season and see.  Thanks for the responses.  It’s 76” long so for curiosity I may cut off a little and see how dense that lighter heartwood is in comparison to the darker stuff. 

[Eric Krewson]

It is nothing more than mineral streaks although a bit more pronounced than any wood I have used so far.

Here is an example of a bow I made from mismatched billets, I picked them to use because they looked the same with 20 years of darkening. Once I went down a grain or two on the backs the difference became very apparent. The top billet has a similar dark streak in it.

[superdav95]

Well that’s a good sign and gives some hope for it being decent too. That also looks kinda cool too.  Thanks Eric!

[Selfbowman]

Interesting Eric. Just asking  did the two billets finish out the same when tillered? Did one seem more dense than the other. Ok and not that it would tell me anything  but what kind of minerals might do this?

[Eric Krewson]

The red billet was noticeably weaker wood but I tillered the limbs to be even. That said, this is one of just a few of the osage bows that I have made that wimp out after about 25 shots and have noticeably less cast. For the first few shots the bow is as good as I have ever made, very quick, as the limbs get mushy my arrows become over spined and starting hitting to the left. I heat treated the limbs to try to correct this loss of performance but it didn't work.

[Selfbowman]

Eric I have built lots of Osage bows that was thicker on one end. Being the same width and length.Cant remember which end the rings was thicker on. But when the rings change in thickness from end to end this happened. I assure it was due to more early wood vs late wood.making the limb with more early wood thicker.

[Eric Krewson]

Nope, exactly the same early to late ring structure on both billets end to end, that is why I thought they were a match,

[Selfbowman]

I speaking to a one piece stave. Just an  observation.

[Eric Krewson]

That is why I prefer billets, I probably have 10 staves in my stash that have a perfect early wood late wood ratio on one end with 1/4" rings, the other end of the stave has grain so tight as to make chasing a ring a chore. I have probably made twice as many billet bows as stave bows, I love sister billets.

The bad thing is; I once had all of these marked and matched, most are sister billets, after shuffling them around, moving and the darkening of the osage I can't tell what is what anymore. I should have marked them with a very bold sharpie instead of a pencil and ballpoint pen.

I started out with just a few that were easy to keep track of, the few grew into hundreds and I lost track. This is all that I have left, I think there are about 30 billets in the pile.