Identifing Snakey Osage

[BrianO]

I have recenty had the opportunity to cut quite a bit of osage.  I have never built a bow my self but I will soon start.  I eventually would like to end up with a snakey piece of osage to work on after some experience.   Most of what I have cut is really quite straight.  When looking for wood like this do you look at the shape of the limb or trunk or the wave in the bark.  Thanks for the help.

[Dano]

I would look for wave in the bark, amazingly it is hard to find truely snakey osage, at least for me.

[Osagetree]

You can use a straight piece of osage and a pattern in a snakey profile to make a snakey bow. As Dano said truley snakey osage is hard to find it would dip and dive in the grain as well as serpentine! Hard to find a good piece that patterns in the curves well.

Here is a limb on my straight osage snakebow I used Mikeys pattern on