cedar find
The recent discussion of Cheetahs got me enthusiastic and I had that in mind when I started my current building project. However, the juniper I have is really kind of boring, no hot grain at all, and I had no cedar, so I opted for osage. I've been looking for the right piece of cedar since this spring, when I let my Cheetah-like cedar bow "Out of the Closet" go to someone who needed a light draw. On this afternoon's lunch and errand outing, my wife asked if I wanted to drop by Rocklers? Duh! There I found a marvelously horrible piece of cedar, 9' x 5 "x over 3/4"… Full of huge knots, punk spots, etc., but I thought I could see several 1 1/2" x 38" runs of good wood here and there, with only small knots and blends of slight white grain running through the red. The board was $12 and came home with me. I had hoped to get four good lam billets out of it, but only got three. Still, I'll get at least three lam slices out of each billet, possibly four. At four lams to a bow, that's two or maybe three nice cedar longbows with boo cores. Be awhile before I get to this project, but it'll be interesting to see how Cheetah like I can get.
I posted pix of the wood with today's work report on the "How It Goes" page.