the stave was givin to me by a friend who has a camp in pa. so yeah chasing a dry ring with stones wasnt easy . luckily there was a good ring close to the sapwood. aside from roughing it out the tillering wasnt that hard. the stone do a great job of scraping down the much denser wood. i found that a very steep edge on the stone worked much better on osage than on the softer woods. a shallower edge on white wood cuts and scrapes but on the osage it sort of shatters and looses its edge quickly. on the other hand a steep edge on wide wood tends to chatter like a spoke shave at the wrong angle.
rick dogbane can definetly hold its own . its as good as linen. rough material doesnt last as long as a string made of plys. im going to take some time and really process the fibers and spin them on a drop spindle into finer string and then make the bowstring. i think i could get a string as thin as dacron . when you come up we will rough out some bows together . that is the hardest part of the process and its really not that difficult. we have plenty of 3" trees that we can take at the club. peace
