Incense cedar is an excellent bow wood on par or better than juniper since it has the same compressive abilities of juniper, but none of the defects commonly found in juniper. It tends to grow straight rather than twisted and the trunk is largely branch free in older trees. The growth rings are tight like juniper and the density is about the same. That does not look like the incense cedar I've used before here in Taiwan, but it doesn't look exactly like Western Juniper either. There tends to be little to no distinction between the sapwood and heartwood on incense cedar (or at least it is very gradual as it changes) whereas juniper is normally quite clearly defined in most species. Western Juniper is more brownish while eastern varieties and RMJ have the purple heartwood. One easy way to distinguish the two is smell. You can smell the leaves before harvesting or the wood after harvesting. The smell is clearly definable between the two. Incense cedar smells sort of like sandalwood and cypress mixed together. Juniper smells like gin in the leaves or berries and well, the wood is hard to describe. Either way, there are plenty of examples of it being used to make bows the same as you would use juniper or yew in a short, sinew-backed bow and from experience, it works the same, so count yourself lucky. It is one of those not-so-often spoken of treasures because it is very restricted to a certain geographic region. I believe the main reason for using limbs compared to the trunk traditionally was ease of harvesting and curing as well as tighter growth rings. Perhaps compression wood found in the limbs was also desired.
