Incense cedar?

[halfseminole]

I have one straight and one recurved 6'board of this stuff.  Hickory backed, would it make a decent bow, or do I need to go looking again for something?

[Sam Harper]

If by "incense cedar," you mean the same thing as aromatic cedar, yes you can back it with hickory and make a good bow, but it's tricky to tiller.  You have to do a really good job of it or it will fail in compression.

[halfseminole]

It's deep purple-red with wide rings and frequent knots like some ERC.  Dunno if that helps.

[LittleBen]

Aromatic cedar is ERC as far as I can figure. Incense cedar is an actual cedar from the west coast, but I've seen at least a few references call ERC incense cedar.

Never used the actual incense cedar, only ERC.

ERC is decent, but from the numbers incense cedar does not look terribly promising.

[Pat B]

Incense cedar(Calocedrus decurrens) is related to cypress. It may work for  sinew backed bow but would probably be iffy for a selfbow.

[newhouse114]

They call it pencil wood out here on the coast. Very brittle with very little flex. I know that western red, and white have been used for bows by certain indigenous peoples.

[LittleBen]

My guess is that what Ed has is ERC. A pic would let us know for sure.