Cut a sapling last winter and dried it out. The tree was only 4" or 5" across. I guess the witewood to heartwood ratio was so that it split itself lengthwise in several long slits as it dried. I should have split it then!
About 4 months ago I reduced the sapling down by splitting it along the splits caused when it dried out. The rough staves have been laying in my building since.
The bottom center of the osage sapling was all punky wood. This left me very little heartwood to make a bow from. But, I did end up with two staves 66" long and about 1 1/2" wide to play around with.
I decided to leave the whitewood on to have enough wood to work with. So,,, the belly will be a very thin layer of heartwood backed by the natural thickness of the whitewood or sapwood.
To make them a little different I left the bark on the backs in the none working portions of the handles and the handles are left wide at this point.
Then the staves were shaped and the under layer of bark was scraped off to the 1st whitewood layer or ring. This picture shows between the vice at the handle out to where I have scraped off the softer under layer of bark. Even though it is whitewood it still has some osage yellow tint to it.
A few thorns popped right off with the bark. They can give ya a pretty good stick. Saplings have thorns!
Not a good close up picture but here at an old limb hole there is a small verticle crck and was caused by drying. I think it will be okay, I'll fill it with super glue before tillering.
Needs a little heat bending!
I thought there may be issues with heating the whitewood but it did well.
I use a little mineral oil, a heat gun and a pair of leather padded visegrips and eyeball the twist. Just holing it till it cools is the hard part but it works for me.
Topic: Sapling Osage (Sapling Sister's Finished) (Read 672 times)
