Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: BowEd on July 04, 2013, 12:00:59 am
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Cashed in on some local nice black locust & choke cherry staves today.Was gonna just go after black locust but this choke cherry was there too.Both from 6and1/2" logs.One picture seems dimmer for some reason.I'll clean them up in the next couple of days.
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another view
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Good looking haul. Pretty straight black locust too.
Tracy
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Looks like some good staves Beadman. I've never worked any choke cherry but love black locust for bow wood, hope you get some good shooters out of em'.
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They were very straight logs of about 6'.I ripped em on my bandsaw to reduce any waste.Did that before with some other choke cherry staves and they dried fine.Some of this choke cherry around here gets to be a foot thick.Easiest stuff there is to debark.Makes good bows too.Nice thing about them is they are'nt that terribly tall of a tree even being that thick.Did'nt need to carry them more than a block or two up to the truck.The black locust I'm lookng forward to working too.I'll take the bark and sapwood off of those.The black locust was a lot taller.
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Looks to be some pretty clean straight wood, hope you get some nice bows from it.
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Looks like a nice haul. :)
Pappy
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Nice Haul!
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Thanks,Well you know how it is it's nice to have different stuff around in case of a possible good trade too.Both logs were gun barrel straight.Last time some of my black locust staves warped sideways after 4 or 5 months but then I reduced them to 2" wide and 1and1/2" deep.This time I'm still gonna remove the bark and sapwood because the same bug that gets into hedge sapwood gets into black locust sapwood here too,but I'll leave the staves wider on the back and pie shaped.Right now they are 4 to 5 inches wide.Could spray it too I guess but I want to see the back of these and it'll dry faster too without the bark and sapwood even after putting shellac on the back.
I've heard it commented that these bigger choke cherrys should have rot of some sort in the center.Not so with any that I've cut here.The stuff sure has a sweet smell working with it,and previous ripping the staves out of the logs did'nt make them warp while drying either.Well behaved wood drying.Density wise both woods to me seem to be close to the same.
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Beadman,
What exactly does the chock cherry bark look like?
Got any picts? Good haul btw, looks like ya got some nice bows in the future ;)
Thanks,
Greg
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I'll get you some pics up soon if my darn batteries on this digital camera hold up.This thing goes through batteries like like a plow horse through water on a hot day.
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th....Here's the pictures of the bark and some leaves of what I'm calling choke cherry.It is common here and the younger trees have a lot smoother bark.Those can be used for arrow shafts I'm told but hav'nt tried them yet because I have a lot of dogwood here too.The older it gets the scalier the bark gets.The leaves on the young and old are exactly the same.The wood [color,smell,ring orientation, and amount of sapwood] is the same between young and old.Although the older it gets the sapwood does get thinner & the heatwood gets thicker.It can grow in ditches here in colony style growth and it can grow by it self too.The larger ones are always by themselves.They don't usually get more than 25 to 30 foot tall by themselves.That's a tall one too.Fruit on it is a roundish type half as big as a walnut with a big pit in the center.Starting out green then turning reddish towards the fall.Every animal around here eats them.Eating them too early and they are bitter and dry.Sometime I'll take a picture of a large one.
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another
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Why is it I always thick of what I should of done later.....LOL.I shoud've shot a picture of the ends.The sapwood is maybe 3/8" thick.Transition from sapwood to heartwood chasing a ring can be like red cedar.There will be be rings with heartwood and sapwood intermixed before fetting all the way to the heartwood.The sapwood is thicker towards the bottom of the tree like a lot of trees are.Cutting a thick limb off of the main trunk farther up the limb can produce a mostly heartwood stave with thinner sapwood.
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The leaves are waxy & shiny too.
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Thanks much Bead
I googled it but couldn't find any good picts
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twistedhickory....I searched on the computer too about this cherry I've got here.There is a native black cherry in Minnesota[none in Iowa apparently] that has the exact same type of bark my staves have.This could be black cherry too.Although I've read that black cherry can get 50 to 60 foot tall and I hav'nt ever seen this type here get that tall.Sorry for possibly misleading.Regardless,I've made a bow from it and it is good bow wood.Bottom line.
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Chokecherry of that size usually still has smooth bark, and its leaves are not waxy. Sounds like black cherry. it might stay small due to poor soil, that's the main limiting factor that contributes to a tree's height.
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By waxy I mean shiny and they are that.Leaves from both are the same here in Iowa. :)