Hackberry ring chasin'

[TurtleCreek]

  I am trying to work a hackberry stave down to one ring and I can't seem to diffentiate between one ring and the next.  I have worked ash and red elm which is easy to tell where one ring starts and the other ends but this hackberry is giving me headaches.  Any tips or advice?

[soy]

The hackberry I have chaced down similar to osage with a draw knife ,you feel the (crunch )scrape the pith or dull down to the shine. But mine might have more early wood hope it helps

[PEARL DRUMS]

Ouch. The hackberry bows I have built didnt need a ring chasin'. I couldnt imagine that. The rings are so thin I cant tell between them on the ends hardly. Get it close and put some sinew or rawhide on.

[sweeney3]

Oh man.  I've made several hackberry bows and never chased a ring.  Just peeled the bark and went at it.  I imagine it would be tough to tell rings on it with no difference in color and whatnot.  On other woods like that I have cut down a ring or two and then used rough sandpaper and sanded it smooth so there are no nicks or scars left in it.  Might try that.  I dunno.

[TurtleCreek]

  Thanks for the advice guys.  I guess I got a little spoiled chasin' a ring on something as easy as ash and then going to hackberry.  Will the Hackberry early wood have the same "open pore" appearance?

[Stingray45]

Hey Turtlecreek. I actually had something workout for me by accident haha. I had stained the back of my hackberry stave because I bought it from someone and had to take the poly off so I wasn't sure how good the ring was so I was going to back with rawhide. So the rawhide didnt work out well and I peeled it. Then I decided to chase a ring since I wasn't using the rawhide anymore. The darker stain helped a bit to chase the ring, but also when chasing you should be able to see the difference in rings. The top ring should be more a white with a very light yellow hue to it. The next ring should be more of a yellowish collor than that top ring. You should also be able to see a slightly darker "crunchy" part in between. I usually start out with my scrape that I made from an edger blade. That way you really have to work to violate the next ring before noticing it. With the drawknife you can cut through both really quick because there isn't a big difference like other wood.

[TurtleCreek]

  I will try that, thanks stingray

[Stiks-N-Strings]

I would have to lean towards Pearl and Sweeney. Hackberry is a white wood not a ring pourous wood like osage. Just peel the bark and there you go. If you have to take bark with a draw knife I woul take it down to cambium and use sandpaper or a scraper to get to the sap wood.

[TurtleCreek]

  The only thing with just peeling the bark off to get the back ring is that I got the stave with the bark already off.  The stave came from someone that isn't into bowmaking so they had no idea and in the process of them debarking it, they really butchered up the back of the stave.  What do you guys think of just decrowning it and making it into a longer eastern woodlands bow?

[JW_Halverson]

I've made bend in the handle hackies before, just not de-crowned.  If you were to back with rawhide or something else it oughta stand up pretty well, I'd think.

Good luck, post pics.

[soy]

I had to chace one down because a poorly hit wedge sent a damaging blow to the top ring from my maul  oops! But I must have been fortunate to have enough early wood to not make it to difficult, the tree was 12"-14" in dia.

[toomanyknots]

As a plus, as long as the bow is longer (70" +) it seems to take ring violation ok. As long as it is kept to a minimum I have made hackberrys with violated backs and never had a failure. I make a 90# @ 26" (read: unshootable) hackberry flatbow/holmegard bow that was around 73" long and only like 1/2" set. Had a violated back too, not super bad but some pretty big spots here and there still. Also had cut threw the back nocks. Which the string did not cut or indent into the wood like on other woods. I was keeping it as a workout bow pretty much, but just got tired of it and removed enough wood trying to lower the weight to where it had ridiculous set, so it ended up in the crap pile outside. I think I should of kept it just cause. String tension was insane.