Well, done some drawknifing on osage that i still haven't finished, so this will be my first ring chased on a stave (first stave bow period, not counting the one that snapped). It's hackberry, 57" long, gonna be for the wife, bout 30# draw at 25". Not quite the nightmare i was expecting, but it was quite a bit more difficult than osage.
Here are some pics of the back and you can see the butt end a little in one. I'm stopping short of the ring i was going for, which was about 1/8" thick, this one is between 1/16th at thinnest and 1/8th at thickest, which i suppose is enough.
You may notice some extra material left around three pin knots. toward the top end of the stave. Gonna fine tune those next.
(you can see the last 8 or so inches of the layer i'm removing on the right of the last pic)
"Why chase a ring on hackberry when the back is just under the bark?" you may ask. The outer 3/4"-1" of wood on all the staves i cut from a tree were no good (I found out the hard way . . .SNAP!
). So instead of firewood, i decided to give it a go at chasing down to a good ring where the wood was no longer spongy. Must have been a fungus, or dry rot, or the drought, who knows.
On the downside, this 2+ inch wide stave is now down to about 1.5" wide due to how deep i had to go to get some good wood. Yes, much narrower than preferred for hackberry, but she will be backed with silk. Hope that does the trick.
Can't wait to finish shaping and floor tiller!!
Many thanks to George Stoneberg for showing me the ropes on drawknifing/ring chasing. He helped me get started on one of his osage staves back in the summer (yup, that's the one i need to finish, plus two of mine i've started on . . .
)
Appreciate any thoughts and input!
