Growth Rings

[Buckeye Guy]

I am with you Clint !
I have often wondered why others don't leave the (crunchy stuff) till the sanding process after the bow is tillered out ?
Just figured I was being differant again!
You know us worthless nuts !
Guy

[crooketarrow]

  I uselly don't wood on a stave unless the rings are 16 th or bigger. I use a fine wood rasp. I don't anything special a round knots and just take it down to the ring I want.

[Qwill]

I use a drawknife and scraper. Osage and Mulberry make every other wood seem easy. Locust is hard, for some reason. Siberian elm is a pain. I haven't tried yew yet, but I'm going to here soon.

[David_Daugherty]

Thanks to everyone for the posts.  This will help tremendously.  On my next one I will try to work the draw knife!

[Bevan R.]

On my next one I will try to work the draw knife!

Get yourself a piece of scrap, and just practice with the knife, taking off a ring at a time. You might want to try sharpening or dulling the blade. Some like them dull, some very sharp. It will become a personal preference for you also (in time). But just practicing on some scrap will help you relax instead of learning on a stave.

[Del the cat]

Thanks to everyone for the posts.  This will help tremendously.  On my next one I will try to work the draw knife!

At the risk of stating the obvious, try the draw knife both ways up, pushing, pulling, whatever. There is no single 'right way' to use one, it's a very versatile tool which can split of great swathes of wood or shave off the tiniest curls. Being long you can hold one end still and use all that leverage for very fine control, a quarter inch at one end will move the blade near the fixed end less than a sixteenth.
Del

[JW_Halverson]

I started chasing growthrings with a dull drawknife.  Probably saved a lot of growthrings from premature death!!!  Now that I have some tool technique I want my drawknife as sharp as my broadheads. 

Like Okie, on a well seasoned and uncomplicated stave, I can get 'er done in about 30 minutes.  But that's rare.  It's more likely a couple hours.  I always stay well away from pin knot clusters and dips in the grain.  I often use a 1/4 or 3/8 inch curved gouge type chisel and slowly pare away the wood around the knots and dips.  I have done one mulberry with something like 20 clusters of pin knots that took almost 15 hours of work to get to a growthring.  Used the little gouge for the whole thing, scraped with a small pocket knife.  That stave likely took 8 years off my life.  Can't say how many times I ran out of expletives and had to go buy more!