I AM IRON WOOD

[sailordad]

   well i know those of yu whom have read my other most recent thred have been asking for pics of the logs.
and for the rest of you i will fill you in on the story now.
on a differant website,one dedicated to local trad bow hunters here in mn i met a guy, via pm's,that was cutting down some
iron wood (hhb) on his land.
he said he would be willing ti give me a few staves.we messaged back and forth for awhile and the other day he sent me another pm.
in th most recent message he said that he dropped them of at another guys house,this other guy lived about one hour and fifteen minutes north of me.
this was fine as the guy doing the cutting lived pretty near 2 hrs away.
well me and this other guy,Chad is his name,got in touch and arranged for me to pick these staves up last night.so the wife and i drive up to Brainerd after work.
we get there after dark,i knock on the door,he answers and we introuduc our selves.
we get to tlaking and he shows me what the other gut dropped of for me.
  my eyes popped out of their sockets
i couldnt belive it, 5 thats right 5 logs, complete logs,not just staves but logs. 8 ft long each and everyone of them,8 ft long.
2 were smaller,but about average for the ironwood that i have seen.the other three,man they were about the largest hhb logs ever.
i never knew that it would grow that large.the smaller ones showed some twist by the bark,and sure enough when i split thme two taoday,they were twisted.
but being 8 ft long,i think i can manage to get usable staves from them. and what the heck i do own a heat gun.
the other three logs are much straighter,showing very little twist in the bark.hopefully the will spit straighter than the others.
now the largest two had some moss on the bark,so i took my draw knife after that today and it doesnt look like it had gone thru the bark into the wood at all.
these last three wil lneed to wait untill i can get a little help splitting,this stuff is tuff
well thats about enough of my rambling on,heres the pics
in this pic,the ones i spli today ore on the right

in this pic the ones i split are on the lft,if you look you can see the bark shows twist


thanks for looking

                                                                                                peace,
                                                                                                     tim

[Kegan]

Wow! I'm going ot have to commit that bark to memory and look up the leaves. I've always heard such outstanding claims for HHB!

[AKAPK]

Lucky Lucky Good wood what a score Gifts are nice especially from Mother Earth.Peace PK

[nickf]

another guy I'm jealous off... DAmn :p

those are some nice staves sailordad! you should get some piggystaves out for sure, the heartwood is beautyfull.

nick

[DanaM]

Nice haul Tim whats the diameter of the biggest log? Can't say I've HHB that big before either

[Marc St Louis]

Nice.  I prefer to kerf then split my wood, less waste.  The biggest of those look to be about 6" in diameter.  That's a good size.  I've harvested some as big as 12", very rare and I've seen some bigger but they were too twisted or gnarly to use

[Ryano]

I cut and split one last weekend that was a good 12-15" through. Iron wood is good bow wood.

[TRACY]

Looks like many bows to come out of that haul. I sure don't find them that large in diameter here in IN. The ones I do find have the twist you mentioned and are not worth the time to steam or heat. Have fun!

Tracy

[sailordad]

      thanks everyone

are belly staves usable from hhb? it is a white wood afterall. personally i am still a litle ignorant when it comes to making staves.
after all these are only the second logs that were big enough to split,that i have every had my hands on.
i would like to get as much out of these as possible.

Marc: you say you kerf them to waste as little as possible.
        when dooing this,do you kerf the full length and then about every 4"-5" apart?

Dana: i will go out later and measure the diameter and let ya know

Akapk:yup i love gifts from mom after i get these all split and dried some. i do. plan on sending a few gifts out to a few people.
       so some about mid-summer i will let those of you know.

depending on how many i have left after gift giving,i may want to trade a couple off. i will let everyone know at that time.

                                                            peace,
                                                                  tim

[Justin Snyder]

Nice haul Tim.  You will get some good bows of it Im sure.  Justin

[Marc St Louis]

Tim
I kerf full length and every 2 1/2" or so.  If the log has a twist in it then you might be better off to kerf and let it dry before splitting or the stave may twist up as it's drying

[sailordad]

   marc,
if i may another question.
do you try and follow the pattern of the bark when you kerf,or do you just go  straight up?

Dana: i did measure the wide end of the largest and it was just shy of 7.5"

[DanaM]

Thats a big HHB I'm willing to bet they have some twist in them, thats not to say they won't make good bows.
I think I would try splitting it with out kerfing, at most cut a groove at one end just enough to get a wedge started,
then start beating on it, after you pass out and wake up beat some more

[Bear67]

Great haul, sailordad.  It makes me drool just looking at all that wood laying there. I am new to making bows to give any advise but i would like to know what is kerfing? 

[sailordad]

kerfing is just basicaly creating a fault line(to my understanding)so as to guide the split .
you can kerf wood,brick,glass etc,even leaf srings in your truck