Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: DuBois on February 04, 2017, 05:57:17 pm
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I salvaged a bunch of wood from a roadside construction project this past summer but didn't debark it and now am wondering if it is really trustworthy.
I got some serviceberry, ash, birch, wild cherry, and buckthorn. I guess I let myself get carried away and should have gone smaller and better prepared what I had.
It was in my shed and I noticed some fuzzy mold on some of the logs. Not good ventilation in there. Not sure about under the bark but I think it is mostly firewood now.
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You can dry a piece and give it a try but my guess is it will be at least compromised, maybe worthless. I was given some hickory that had mildew spots on it. When I finally got a piece dried, shaped, and on the tillering tree... the first time I bent it, it stayed bent and never came back.... no resilience.
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I split up some of it today and I just don't trust it. I got a pair of decent serviceberry staves and pair of cherry I think are alright cause they were in my garage instead. Good enough!
I didn't really want to wrestle the bark off of them now anyway. Whew!
I am gonna try to slow down next time and really take care of what I get right and have some beautiful and clean backs all shellacked up and smooth! This is starting to sound weird aint it?
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Thing of it is, if you had split and debarked the logs when you got them, you would not have had to seal the backs on any of that wood. Since it was during the growing season, the bark would have slipped right off. Ash in particular would have let you just shuck the bark off like husking corn.
I'm just sayin'
Jim Davis
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Thing of it is, if you had split and debarked the logs when you got them, you would not have had to seal the backs on any of that wood. Since it was during the growing season, the bark would have slipped right off. Ash in particular would have let you just shuck the bark off like husking corn.
I'm just sayin'
Jim Davis
Definitely. I'm always on the look out for roadside bow wood. I almost always rough bows out asap and let them dry out like that. The only time I get checking doing it this way is when I leave a handle area thick and usually, since it won't be working, it doesn't pose a problem.
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Yeah, I like doing that but got in a hurry and greedy too. You see the result of that.. Haste makes waste.
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One hard lesson I learned was never to bring home more wood than you can process in a reasonable length of time before it goes bad.
Most of my osage is salvaged wood from other people's land clearing. Naturally I would haul off everything I saw about to be burned after getting permission from the landowner.
Several times my backyard looked like a log yard. Working shift work full time as well as tons of overtime left me with limited time to work on my wood pile. I have stripped bark and sapwood every day for a month until my hands were swollen like sausages.
At some point I had to stop, I couldn't take it anymore, not having a good place to store raw wood out of the weather I lost some piles of mighty fine wood to bugs and checking.
My new game plan became; "don't bring more wood home than you can handle in a few days". This has worked for me for the last 15 years and I haven't lost a stick of wood since.
Someone asked me about how to split osage so I took this gag picture telling them "you split osage logs until you pass out, when you come to, jump up and resume splitting".
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v181/ekrewson/Osagesplittingtoomuch.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/ekrewson/media/Osagesplittingtoomuch.jpg.html)
This is some of the wood I lost part of by being overloaded, the picture only shows part of what I brought home.
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^lol ;D ;D ;D that picture is priceless!
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Lol!
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Good pic.We earn our bows for sure....lol.
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I would love to see that pic on the cover of P.A.!
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I resemble that picture, Eric. I've been plowing through staves for several weeks, with logs still in the shop, outside, and a mountain of hickory needing attention up in the garage. Some of it checked on me and I had to burn it. I do what I can, but my back and wrists bother me after a while and I have to quit. Can only do so much in a day. I just try to keep after it, and resist the temptation to fetch more :)
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Pleeeez! Mods, this is important info and deserves to be acknowledged and understood. It could prevent just this type of injury as well.
Man, I see I am just another one learning this lesson.