Juniper bow stave removal by Native Americans

[Billinthedesert]

Was skimming Steve Allely's chapter, "Western Indian Bows," in Volume One of TBB and he mentioned Phil Wilke's paper on the subject.
Here is a link to it.
http://cloudfront.escholarship.org/dist/prd/content/qt4v5249w9/qt4v5249w9.pdf

[Msturm]

Well that is pretty neat!  I learned a lot from that, thank you!

[JWMALONE]

I cant click on the link?

[Knoll]

Put "http" in front of the 1st colon.

[JW_Halverson]

"By the time ethnographers seriously concerned
themselves with recording the details
of traditional archery, the bowyer's art had
vanished from the Great Basin. "


Bummer, right?

[Billinthedesert]

I edited the link to add http per Knoll's suggestion. Hope that helps.

[BowEd]

That is so very interesting how they managed to do that in a primitive setting.Then with the gauanteed regrowth of straight grained knot free wood.

[Bryce]

Utah has a few trees like that in the Roosevelt area where my buddy lives. While we go out looking for juniper stave and see a tree with straight grain, sometimes on the backside you can see where a stave was taken. Or a very large lower limb that the top is missing a section, and tried to heal itself but junipers are very slow growing and that’s what’s cool is that evidence is still visible.

[Springbuck]

I read this paper a few years back and it was fascinating. 

Bryce, I found one tree, too, down by Nephi, and I THINK one way out west, near the Blue Mountains.

 When I harvested a few staves the same way, I just sawed partially through each end of the stave, on the top side of a long, sprawling lower limb of a big juniper.  If you leave it a while (weeks) and come back, you can just lean on the tip of the limb out past the second cut, and the stave 90% pops off as the limb bends.   It's easy to pull or lever it free.

[Hawkdancer]

Very interesting reading!  It would be neat to actually see such a tree!  Getting such a stave would great!
Hawkdancer

[Hrothgar]

Thanks for posting, very interesting. (A few of us out there don't have copies of the TBB).

[Bryce]

I read this paper a few years back and it was fascinating. 

Bryce, I found one tree, too, down by Nephi, and I THINK one way out west, near the Blue Mountains.

 When I harvested a few staves the same way, I just sawed partially through each end of the stave, on the top side of a long, sprawling lower limb of a big juniper.  If you leave it a while (weeks) and come back, you can just lean on the tip of the limb out past the second cut, and the stave 90% pops off as the limb bends.   It's easy to pull or lever it free.

Exactly! You can actually cut the two end on the upper part a a limb and I’ve heard of some leaving it there to partially season to keep it from having too much reflex.

Which blue mountains? Bc he have blue mountains here in Oregon which there are juniper and yew

[Springbuck]

  We have a range called the Blue Mountains on the Utah/Nevada border, near the Deep Creek Range.

[Traxx]

I have seen a few of these trees,where i grew up..Some,i was shown,,others i accidentally found..

[RandyN]

Thank you for sharing that paper. I have not seen a tree like that but will be on the look out to try and spot one.