Thanks for the reply Justin - well, I guess I'll start with a couple questions? I'll post some picts too to help explain -- maybe.
Seems that all the books talk about sealing the ends w/ paint or glue, I've done that. Some say not to do anything until they are "cured", others say rought it out first. Thoughts on this? I'm anxious..
For the pictures, the first pict is of all the staves I cut the other day - the trees (vine maple - Central WA Cascades - East slopes) were cut ranging between 2" and 4" in diameter. Then I split them in 2/3's, keeping the larger piece which was the top side of the VM as it was growing - still trying to figure out this tension vs compression stuff. I used a bandsaw to make the cuts, I also cut the sides of each stave - thinking it would help rough out and help cure.
The way I cut them was to contour the growth pattern -- see the second photo (dotted line). I put a dot of ink at the 'point' of each growth ring, which showed me the center of the tree. But when marking out to cut the edges, I basically stayed with the contour of the outside edge and too 1/4" off - leaving me with a 2.5" wide roughed bow. If looking at it as if you were shooting the bow, it would look like a wiggly snake rather than a straight cut (make sense?). Would this be correct? or should I lay it out to cut a perfectly straight edges?? nothing seems to say exactly what to do here - so I made a best guess.
Third pic was to show the bow back, I left the bark on as its pretty hard to remove this time of year. What do I do here, scrape it down to the sap wood, no further? or try to get to a ring? Do I wait to let it 'cure' first?
Crud, I'm not really sure where to start here - but as I said before, the native americans didn't have the internet either -- maybe I'm making too much of this??
He'p?
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