Splitting troubles

[Nim-rod]

Today is a great day! Well mostly...I went out searching for Hickory and drove 30 miles away where i had seen it off the highway. Asked one feller I saw on a side road and he directed me to a farm. Talked to the Lady owner and she gave me permission to take whatever I wanted off her 160 acres! She even has Black Locust in there too! Got permission to hunt her posted land too! So far so great right? Ok I cut one Hickory (shagbark) tree down mostly with a hatchet as my Ax broke (BTW I can bring my chainsaw next time)and hauled it home. Got to splitting it and it comes out with the ends 45 degrees different! THis has happend on almost EVERY tree I have cut so far! How can I rememdy this? Am I doing something wrong? Should I saw cut the wood instead? HELP ME! I want good staves to come out of this without cutting every tree she has down. I look at the tree and all seems straight grained too.

[SEMO_HUNTER]

You should buy a lottery ticket, I don't think I've ever met someone as lucky as you. Or you just have an award winning personality?

You could try scoring the stave first with a chainsaw or skill saw, then splitting from the center out toward the ends. That's what I do with a stave that's big enough for 2 bow blanks and not much room for error. Or find someone who has a sawmill to saw it in quarters for you or an extra large band saw.
If you have an Amish villiage nearby they usually have a sawmill and they do that sort of work for a fee. They also know how to split rails with the best of em using only hand tools also.

[okie64]

Sometimes you can read the amount of prop twist a tree has by looking at the bark before you cut it down. The best way to deal with prop twist is to get your stave close to bow dimensions and then straighten it out with heat. Some prop twist can be tolerated and doesnt need to be straightened, I've got an ash bow I built a couple of years ago with the limbs rotated about 30 degrees from each other. Scoring a log without knowing how much twist it has is really not a very good idea. If you score a log on a straight line that has as much twist as the one you're talkin about then you would have seriously violated the grain and there would be a much greater chance of the bow breaking.

[SEMO_HUNTER]

It would take a lot of twist to get far enough around to violate the grain inside bow dimensions, that is as long as you leave plenty of wood to remove from the bow blank. I've done it on individual staves, not the entire log. You have to at least get it split in half then you can see what kind of grain your dealing with. If it's twisted that bad then you'll just have to split it where it wants to split and take what you get.

[Nim-rod]

Yes my award winning personality won out today
:-) You would be surprised what you can get with a few kind words and some good old fashioned butt kissing. She did request a wall hanger for the hosue but that is totally do-able.
The bark (to me) looked perfectly straight running but then again mine is an untrained eye. No Amish up in these parts (NH) It looks like in the next few weeks I will be getting a few years worth of wood so maybe I will experiment a bit with my splitting teqniqes and maybe try the chainsaw up the side for one and see the results of that. Since it is Hickory mabe having that one long runout on the side won't make a difference? Doesnt seem to on board bows from what I gather and the back won't be violated in any way. That one log musta weighed 150 lbs and I had to carry it like 100 yards through the woods. I spotted a nice one near the road that I think will be my next "victim".

[John Scifres]

Hickory isn't the easiest to heat correct but it is possible.  Get thin as possible and steam it.  I haven't had much luck with a heatgun and hickory.

You can also cut it at the center and splice it back together correcting the twist as much as possible during the splice.

The best remedy is learning to read the twist before you cut.  That's not as easy on hickory, especially shagbark, as it is on oter woods but it is possible.

Good luck.  Have fun.  Post pics.

[SEMO_HUNTER]

What kinda wall hanger is she looking for? A deer head? You better start scouting now!

The only way I could see it being a problem is if it has a major amount of prop twist and you try to make your staves too skinny. I always strive to split mine at least 4" wide on the ring side. Doesn't always work out that way, but that will give ya plenty to work with.
Hickory is alot like Osage in how it splits, it's stringy as heck when it's green and will be for quite some time. I've split osage that was a year old and it was still striny.
I'm gonna get myself some hickory soon and also hackberry. I've seen a bunch of hackberry since I started looking for it, and it's absolutely everywhere around here. Doesn't look to hard to cut either cause it's all fairly straight, unlike osage that normally hangs up in the surrounding timber and it's some hateful stuff to work up. It's got thorns on the outer smaller limbs that are hooked like multifloral rose does.   :eek:

[okie64]

Semo, I just cut some hackberry about a month ago and it was a breeze to split. Nothing like osage or hickory, it split straight and easy. I was kinda surprised at how heavy it was though. The log was about 10" diameter and it was a load to carry out. I hope it works out cause theres lots of it around here and it usually grows straight up like you said.

[Nim-rod]

John I may just try some steam on the first stave and see where I get.
Semo She wants a bow and some arrows to hang on the wall. I'm sure I will have one come underweight or some other flaw that I won't want the bow. As long as cosmetically it looks good. I wish I had Osage up here! Too bad I didn't think about that while I was at Fort Leonard Wood last summer for a few weeks. Not sure if we have hackberry here but I'll be searching for that and Hophornbeam which is a local wood. I have a tree guide and a list of woods I jsut need some leaves to show up to ease the identification process!

[okie64]

Sorry Nim-rod I didnt mean to get off topic there. I've been lookin everywhere around here for hophornbeam but cant find any.

[SEMO_HUNTER]

Hackberry is easily identified by the bark. Around here I can spot hackberry from 50 yards away cause it doesn't look like anything else around, osage is the same way but it's sometimes easily confused with mullberry at first glance. I think I may have seen some hophornbeam also, but I need to study it closer.....not sure yet? That one I'll need leaf ID on as well as bark.

Good luck with your wood search and congrats on finding such a treasure chest! I must say that I am very envious!   :D    

[Nim-rod]

No Probs Okie. This is a good discussion as far as I'm concerned. I need this to learn what woods do what in general. One day I will look back and be able to coment on MY experiences with (hopefully) ALL the types of woods used in bow making. And hopefully pass on that knowledge to others as those pass onto me.

[SEMO_HUNTER]

Originally posted by Nim-rod:
No Probs Okie. This is a good discussion as far as I'm concerned. I need this to learn what woods do what in general. One day I will look back and be able to coment on MY experiences with (hopefully) ALL the types of woods used in bow making. And hopefully pass on that knowledge to others as those pass onto me.

You will if you stick with it and you'll be giving advice to others just starting out. It's a fun ride, enjoy it.  

[Living_waters]

Nim-rod  sometimes hickory doesn't split straight with the grain. I know it is supposed to but with out thinking it all out the interlocked grain seems to cause splits to run a little wild. May not be with all species but I have had it do it before. may possibly be some inner grain twist that causes this, sure some one here will explain it . After ruining several staves I found out if I peeled the bark off and followed the grain with a pencil  giving me a true line from end to end. I could start in the middle on that line with screw drivers and small wedges and split out taking very small steps, getting several wedges at intervals all the way to the tip before I go much more than an inch deep. Then I go back and drive them a little deeper. This could probably be done also by scoring it with a circular saw or chain saw. you just want to make sure you follow the grain on the back because that will be what you use. I have had to do this with mulberry some times as well. Don't know why but this help improve my stave harvest success tremendously.

[Nim-rod]

The underbark grain run of hickory is pretty hard to see but it got me thinking that maybe starting the split from the middle wouldn't be a bad idea to try. Kinda follows your idea and perhaps splitting from the end tends to rip a twisted path and by starting in the center it may give it a better chance to stay on the true course. Something to try that has a bit of logic in it me thinks. Thanks for the input Living waters!

[Living_waters]

Like I said I ruined several good staves trying to end split them. Now if I have a question I just start in the middle, especially if the stave is less than 6inches wide and I am trying to split it. I am not good enough to end up with two usable staves in those close quarters.

You can also take some charcoal dust and rub the back with it and wipe it with a paper towel it will highlight the grain pattern. Eyes getting older has taught me that trick

[Nim-rod]

Today I went back to my hickory spot and got a nice score! I brought my trailer this time and cut a 14" tree down and bucked it up to 70" long and hauled it home. I tried the split from the middle idea and it may have actually worked but there were some stringers I had to hatchet through but being hickory I doubt that will matter much. Some are split just down the middle and will yield up to 3 staves so I figure I have a possible 30+ bows in this haul!
 Once the leaves are out I'm going back to see if I can get some black locust or Hophornbeam or whatever else for some diversity. Oh and I got a maple sapling with lotsa bumps that might make a good and interesting bow too. I'm pretty happy with myself right now but there is alot of work I need to get out there and get to. Phew!
 In the pic the stuff I got is the leaning stuff on the left, against the shed, top of that table saw (made a couple wood wedges) under the chainsaw and some still on my trailer behind the camera.
 

[red hill]

LW, I do the same trick using carpenter's chalk that you'd put in a chalk line. The blue chalk shows grain very well and wears, or wipes off easily.
    Stan

[Living_waters]

Sweet haul!

Only thing about carpenters chalk I would have it in my ears, wiped all over my face and on the back of my head, which wouldn't be a problem if I had hair to cover it. LOL

[Dean Marlow]

If you decide to leave the bark on those Hickory staves for a little while spray them with some insecticide. Bugs will attack Hickory very quickly when it warms up.Dean