Wood Drying and Seasoning Question

[Dan Landis]

Been reading in several posts lately about the qualities of seasoned wood vs dry wood for making self bows.  I know that most woods take a year per inch of thickness to dry, unless quick dried with heat and air, how long does it take to properly season staves, and what is the difference between seasoned and dry??????Dan

[Pat B]

1" per year so a 2" thick board or stave should dry in one year(1" each way from the center).
 Different woods have different hygroscopic rates(loosing and taking on moisture from the atmosphere). Whitewoods dry faster than osage for instance. I like to work with osage staves that is 2 or 3 years from the stump. You can build a whitewood bow within a few months but a year or more would be better.

[Dan Landis]

Pat, thanks for the response.  If I understand correctly, a stave that is dry doesen't have the same properties as one that has been dried and seasoned for several years.  This may be the reason some of my bows have taken on more set than I feel they should have.  For instance, my first two osage bows both ended up with about 2 to 2-1/2" of set.  Both of these bows were made from the same stave at 1 year from the stump.  The wood was dried inside in the winter.  Each stave was weighed on a scale that measures to the tenth of an ounce, when they stopped losing weight I assumed that they were as dry as they were going to get and started to tiller them.  If I had left them go for another year or so, good bows could have been great bows.
Still trying to get my head around what takes place during the drying/seasoning process.  I've always thought that getting the moisture out of a stave meant that it was ready to work, but there must be more going on than just loss of moisture.  Please don't take me as being argumentative, I'm just trying to understand....Dan

[Pat B]

Lots of folks don't buy this but I believe as the wood cures over years the resins and other chemicals in the wood solidify adding strength to the individual wood cells making it more stable to work with with less chance of warpage and taking set. Most of my experience these days is with woods like osage that are pretty oily. Whitewoods seem to cure out faster than the oilier woods and the drying process seems to take less time but proper curing is still critical I believe.
  Art Butner brought this to my attention a few years ago when he was teaching me how to build hardwood shoot arrows. I can build a good arrow in less than a week with fresh cut sourwood shoots. These arrows occasionally need to be straightened and are somewhat sluggish in flight(slower recovery). If I start with shoots that have been drying for a year or more they rarely have to be straightened again under normal use.
  I don't know if we can blame unseasoned wood for all of our bow building maladies. IMO, lots of it has to do with us trying to rush the process or not designing the bow for the wood used. We are all guilty of this even guys like me that have been building bows for years. But, starting out with well seasoned wood will give us an advantage to start with. After that it is up to the builder and luck.

[Dan Landis]

Pat, Thanks again for your response.  That makes more sense to me now.  I've also had similar results with rose shoot arrows.  I still have several osage staves from the same tree that the first two bows were made from, i"ll see what results I get from them.  I know it won't be an apples to apples test, but we'll see what happens.  Thanks again for taking the time to explain all this to me......Dan

[Pat B]

anytime Don.