Following the grain on eastern hophornbeam

[Eric Garza]

I cut a few eastern hophornbeams last week, and noticed a peculiar thing. Two of the trees split very straight, which is great. But when I looked closely, the split did not follow the grain of the wood. What is up with this?

Is hophornbeam like other woods and I have to follow the grain, or is it resistant enough to splinters that I can ignore the surficial grain and lay out a bow to follow the straightness of the stave itself?

[Ryan Jacob]

To a certain extent, it is possible to make a bow with runoff, if it’s not too bad. Can you send a picture please?

[George Tsoukalas]

Eric,

When you remove the bark and are ready to layout the stave, begin by drawing your center line by following that tip to tip grain. It does not matter what happened previously.

Like this:

http://traditionalarchery101.com/layout.html

Jawge

[Eric Garza]

Hi Ryan, I will try to do this later.

[bushboy]

I may be wrong but I think following the grain on diffuse porous like hhb,elm and maple is less important than ring porous like Osage and locust.

[PatM]

Wood tends to split following the general run of the grain rather than what you may see superficially in the outside of the tree.  Each year the growth rings are added they may be inconsistent in how they are laid down.

 That's why some HHB will split as clean as Maple or it may be as tangled and erratic as Elm but on a more condensed scale due to smaller rings on average.

 It is very tolerant to the external layers running off.  You can straightline a pretty spiralled stave and it will hold up fine. Or not bother to follow  minor snakiness.

[Eric Garza]

Thanks PatM, you have emboldened me.

[bjrogg]

I've made a quite a few HHB and it seems like what's on the surface isn't necessarily what's down a couple inches. I usually reduce belly some before I lay out bow. Then let my draw knife follow where it wants to go. I've also just cut them totally disregarding grain and gotten away with it. Does seem fairly tolerant to that. Seems ungulations and guffy knots are more trouble than run off but maybe I just got lucky. I've actually only had one HHB break and that was from someone improperly stringing it. Most of them were pretty conservatively designed though.
Bjrogg

[hoosierf]

I agree with BJ. The only HHB’s that have failed for me had big knots in working portions of the limbs. I lost two that way that i should have cut up for firewood.

[Dances with squirrels]

Bushboy, Elm is ring porous.