Sourwood

[JustinNC]

Well I been collecting some sourwood per Pat and Hillbilly's rantin and raving Ive read on here about it. One thing I didn't read after wearing the search function out is the sap! Peeled and scraped some potential shaft material and it looks like I murdered a smurf with my bare hands! That stuff don't come off either! Have to scrape your hands to get it off....that or wash your hands repeatedly with washin powders for clothes.

Got 14 potential candidates for shafts. Hopefully I can get about double that and maybe wind up with a dozen finished shafts.

I usually consider myself perdy smart when it comes to knowing this or that about trees and what not, but the sourwood sap is new to me. Not sure how I missed it as a kid beating each other up with switches and whatnot.

[Pat B]

A small bit of Chlorox and water will get rid of the stain. Lemon juice might also.

[JustinNC]

Thanks Pat. Found some more today. Combined with what wouldnt come off yesterday and what I got today, looks like I been usin a bottle of ink for hand soap. I'm glad ya told me in another thread that sourwood won't check, or if it does, not too bad. Sure is nice peeling them fresh green than letting them sit for any time. Bark sure comes off smoother.

[Hillbilly]

Got purty purple hands, do you?? I ran into another guy a while back at a shoot who had purple hands and didn't know why. I asked him if he had been peeling sourwood shoots by any chance, and sure enough.

[JustinNC]

Purple as can be haha

[Pat B]

Steve, Justin is having trouble finding sourwood shoots small enough for arrows. All the stuff he finds looks like 3/4" at the base. Could his lack of altitude(he's at 700' to 800') as compared to my 2600' be the reason for larger shoot growth?

[JustinNC]

Pat I'm sure ill find a couple small ones. After looking at what I have, I've found a couple in my stash that I remembered cutting from closed canopy grown shoots that were close to your ideal dimensions Pat. I do have some sho nuff 2 year stuff that is huge though as Pat was saying. If taking it down with a plane is feasible then I should be alright, however I'm still going to keep my eyes open for the small 2yr stuff. I may be out in left field on my altitude theory but I swear if I've looked at one sourwood tree (not counting suckers and new shoots not attached to sure nuff trees) I've looked at a thousand and only come up with two, atleast second year growth shoots, that were that small.

[Hillbilly]

Best place to look is on road banks or powerlines where they come through every few years and mow all the trees down and the stumps sprout back.

[JustinNC]

Been looking there too....even the new growth is big and fat.

No trouble finding nice relatively straight shoots....it's just that most are too thick and need to be planed. Most of the bright green first year growth is big and fat on them too.

Oh well. I'll just plane them down and make do.

[jonathan creason]

I say leave the purple on your hands.  If people ask about it tell them you're not sure if it's contageous or not.

[JustinNC]

Thank God my kids don't know about it Jonathan!

[Hillbilly]

Justin, I actually prefer to find bigger ones and plane them down to diameter-seems like they are stronger and stay straight easier. They'll shrink quite a bit as they dry, too. You can often take sourwood shoots down to 5/16" and still wind up with a 50's spine and 500-600 grains total arrow weight.

[JustinNC]

Thanks Steve. Now I need to find a thumb plane. Straighten as they're large or plane down a little and straighten? You guys are a wealth of information!

[Pat B]

Justin, $8 at Tru-Value or ACE Hardware. About 1"x2" with an adjustable blade. Works great!!!

[JustinNC]

Please forgive my ignorance when it comes to planes....planes are planes to me, biggins, littlins, and ones in between....are there other names for a thumb plane or a size? I see a pocket plane. Google didn't really show me anything as far as a "thumb plane".