Osage with sapwood?

[George Tsoukalas]

Heartwood is stronger and  denser than sapwood.
If you don't feel like chasing or if it looks pretty then fine. Leave the sapwood.

But...

There is a huge difference between leaving the sapwood on a sapling or a limb bow or leaving it on a mature tree. Usually there is not enough heartwood to make a bow so you must leave sapwood. Sapwood close to heartwood is stronger anyway so it will likely work.

In osage, black locust  and mulberry most of the wood is heartwood on a large tree. Not so on a sapling or limb because the tree is immature.

What happens is the sapwood ring on top of the heartwood eventually gets converted to heartwood as the tree grows. Thus, that sapwood ring is the strongest of all and the one under the bark is the weakest.

You can baby and care for the stave but the sapwood on that babied stave will still be weaker than the heartwood.

I've made bows from osage saplings too but only because there was not enough heartwood for a bow.

Jawge

[Pappy]

What Jawges said, will sap wood work,yes,is the best choice if you have plenty of heart wood to chase a ring,my vote is no.
   Pappy

[toomanyknots]

Maybe toomanyknots will chime in on this one, Hes made quite a few osage bows with sapwood.

Yeah, I'm pretty lazy, lol.    I think it works great. As long as the sapwood is around 1/4" or less in my opinion it will make a fabulous bow, it is very tension strong. I've made super stressed bows with it, I made some really short warbows, and this one bow was thicker than it was wide in some parts (don't know how that happened but it did). It does make seasoning harder though, you don't want the staves overly large, or they will check. You need to have the entire back and of course ends sealed very well, and kept in a cool place for the first 3 or so months of seasoning. All my staves are typically reflexed and sapwood or not they all keep some of that reflex. Here's an example of a 60 pounder:

[Blaflair2]

That's sweet man, I love the look of it.