Corvus, Ocean Spray is a great bow wood, and you're dang lucky if you have lots of 2" diameter 10-15' tall shoots available! Are you in the San Juans?
I've made a few bows from OS, some more successful than others. But I have 2 tips which might be helpful:
-If you are dealing with really nice large (and by large I mean >1.75"
) diameter OS, you might want to consider trapping the bow back a bit. I know it sounds crazy on a stave that narrow, but the wood is so ridiculously tension strong that even with a pretty high crown and heat treated belly I've still had chrysals form where I wasn't expecting any.
-OS really likes to split, as others have mentioned, which is a pain for drying in the round, but with a big knife/junk hatchet/hammer you can split most any piece of fresh OS straight down the middle if you're careful. If you're lucky you can get two staves this way! If you're not aiming for two staves, or on smaller diameter staves, you can try splitting off ~1/3 of the piece, and then use a sharp knife to carefully score down the center of the exposed wood. I've had great success getting that initial cut to split straight to the pith, without having any other cracks form. Then clean out that crack in the handle section after the piece dries and then fill it in with epoxy to make a stiff-handle bow without laminating anything.
Hope that helps, and good luck! Excited to see some epic Ocean Spray bows soon
