So this story starts about 5 years ago. I was talking selfbows with a former boss of mine. He used to make osage bows and has even taken an elk with one. He tells me about an older guy who makes bows in our area. He only lives about 10 minutes away from me. I looked the guys phone number up because I thought it would be a great opportunity to meet a local bowyer and learn from his experience. I tried calling several times but he never answered the phone. I eventually gave up.
Skip ahead to last summer and I'm introduced to a local police detective who is big into traditional archery. He writes a hunting article for the local paper each week. We ran into each other at local events a couple of times. He tells me that the guy who I was trying to get a hold of recently passed away. He said that his son was cleaning out his barns and was burning armfuls of arrow shafts. He said that there was still a pile of osage staves in the barn. He got the sons number and sent it to me. I tried calling and calling but no answer. I looked up every number I could find. I even had my niece texting her friends trying to get a working number. No matter what I tried I just couldn't get in touch with this guy. After a few weeks I gave up and figured the staves were burnt just like the arrow shafts.
Jump ahead another year to this morning. I get a call on my phone that says restricted number. I usually let those calls go to voice mail but for some reason I answered. It was the detective that first told me about the staves. He sounded kind of serious and asked if I had a few minutes to talk. My first thought was wondering if I had done something to get on the wrong side of the law. He told me he was talking to a guy who was working for the bank and was cleaning out the property of the old bowyer who had passed away. The guy mentioned that there was a bunch of firewood stacked in the barn and he could have it if he wanted. The detective knew exactly what it was and it sure wasn't firewood. He went and got all the wood and brought it to his house. He asked me if I wanted to come and look at it. He told me I could have it all if I wanted it. He said that he would like a bow from it if I was able to get some good staves. That sounded like a good deal to me so I loaded it up and brought it home. Its kind of funny how this stash ended up finding me. While I was working on it I felt sad that the guy who cut it never got to make it into bows. It made me think what would happen to my stash when I pass on to the happy hunting grounds.
When I got it home I started sorting through it and could tell it was some old wood. I only found one piece with a date on it. I immediately started tearing into it. The ends were painted so I cut them off to see the rings better. Most of it was around 8' long. There are a lot of drying checks and bug damage. I don't think either problem goes very deep. I got about 75% of it split into staves before I quit for the night.
The first stave I split had a nice hole in it.
The checks look pretty bad.
But they don't go very deep. This is the same end as the picture above. The rings are decent on most of it to.
I love the color on this one
This is where I quit for the day. The stuff in the back pile still needs split.
