Ozbow

A quick phone call to the farmer tee'd up an ok to hit up an osage fence line to harvest a bit of fallen and pre-trimmed timber. It just happened to be the first outing for my new chainsaw, so a bit of fun all round Not sure how much will be useable, but I will check about the possibility of taking a self sown tree of reasonable shape/size. Everything that has sapwood/bark is full of borers so it will be a bit of work to get past them, but I've got the storage space so no rush to trim it down.

I'm almost certain that it's the same farmer that my uncle has access from to shoot fallow, so a return call once a bow is finished might be in order. These trees are only a couple of bowshots away, so a nice circle! There are a couple of osage trees in the paddocks where the deer are, so a bow from a tree that they might have grazed under would be even more 'circle of life'.

I split off a couple of staves from a very dried trunk (far right on ute) and lost a bit due to extra splitting along the edges from dryness, but I should get 2 workable billets from one half of the log with the possibility of splitting the larger into 1/2 again, but I'll leave that until I get to it. There's also plenty of shorter bits to mill into risers, lams and other bits and pieces (need some new handles on the old mans draw knife I'm using at the moment, file handles etc.) so it should keep me out of mischief for a while. Just have to de-bark the rest and split and store away.

Steve

Good score Steve! what do the rings spacings look like?

I'm no expert, so I'll go with what you tell me

From what I can read in the US forums, I'm guessing the first log looks the best with wide rings so I'll be targeting that as much around knots etc.

I'm halfway through an osage self-bow which is mostly sapwood due to size constraints of the stave, so I'm looking forward to having a lot of heartwood to work with as I found it difficult at times to follow a ring in the sapwood.

I read someone say "you take what you've got with osage as there's not a lot of perfectly straight grained timber free from knots etc." which is probably even more relevant down here where it is much harder to get hold of!

that was a good score mate,osage is hard to come by around here ,gazza

first shot looks the best choice, good separation between early and late growth, but bit 'pithy' in the rings.Half your luck!

Hi Steve,

The growth ring pattern in the Osage that you harvested appears similar to a batch of logs I acquired some time ago.

My first attempt at a flat bow ended in grief but eventually I had limited success with a longbow backed with pole bamboo although its performance was a little sluggish.

It would appear that the Osage I had was not suitable for selfbows.

Following are the links to both the bows if you have not seen them;

http://www.ozbow.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=14756

http://www.ozbow.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=15045

Have fun making shavings,

Daryl.

gazza wrote:that was a good score mate,osage is hard to come by around here ,gazza

bigbob wrote:Half your luck!

Indeed, I'm well aware of how lucky I am. Especially as I've been traveling past it many times for years, decades really and it was only a serendipitous set of events that started 17 years ago and culminated a few months ago that made me aware of it and put it in my hands. I still have to return and pick up the base of a large trunk that should be mill-able into billets for splicing and/or lams.

greybeard wrote:Hi Steve,

The growth ring pattern in the Osage that you harvested appears similar to a batch of logs I acquired some time ago.

My first attempt at a flat bow ended in grief but eventually I had limited success with a longbow backed with pole bamboo although its performance was a little sluggish.

It would appear that the Osage I had was not suitable for selfbows.

Following are the links to both the bows if you have not seen them;

http://www.ozbow.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=14756

http://www.ozbow.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=15045

Have fun making shavings,

Daryl.

Thanks Daryl

I'd read through the second thread following your description of splicing elsewhere, but not the first. As I'll be aiming for low weights (<40#) to start with, I'm hoping I can get away without backing. Given family and time constraints I'll be forced to put most of it aside so I'm thinking I can get a bit of time with other timbers I have locally (black wattle and honey locust among others) before returning to it. It will certainly be a slow process but I've really enjoyed the process so far on my first bow. I'll be taking some to a fellow member here in a month or so and am hoping for a few milled boards/lams etc. in return for supplying the timber

Steve