Find another piece of wood

[BowEd]

I was looking forward to making a bow from this stave.
After chasing rings it was revealed the longitudal grain took a complete 90 degree yaw one direction that I'm afraid will eliminate this one from being a bow.I don't see how that this will take a bend consistently.

[Pat B]

That's the problem with many snaky staves, one ring goes one way and the one below goes another. This can lead to a dramatic coming apart.

[bassman211]

 I had a gum stave do that at one end of the stave on a bow. Figured I'd  try it  any how. It broke right at that spot on the tiller tree. Rest of the grain was OK, and I had enough good stave left to make a 46 inch horse bow that came out 38 lbs at 22 inch draw with very slight reflex. The bow Was 64 inches to start with.

[bjrogg]

to bad that one was very interesting.

any chance another ring might work?

is that osage Ed?

I was thinking elm as squiggly as that grain is

bjrogg.

[bradsmith2010]

maybe very light bow,, with heavy layer of sinew,, it does look bad,, 

[Hawkdancer]

Maybe not a bow, but it would make one hellacious fancy walking stick!
Hawkdancer

[BowEd]

I would have to invest quite a bit of time chasing rings to see if it would make a bow.Four rings of sapwood.Then 10 rings of heartwood the whole length of the bow to get to a good ring as the first 10 were very thin to begin with.All with a curved scraper.
A lot of dips and dives on the back also plus a knot or two.
Think I'll try to find a milder snake stave somewhere.

[bjrogg]

Totally understand Ed.

Bjrogg

[Bob Barnes]

that's terrible Ed...sorry man.  If you have the sister stave maybe the two could be cut and spliced into an awesome bow?

[George Tsoukalas]

That is very interesting. Ed. I agree. Time for another stave. Part of being an experienced bowyer is to maximize one's chances at getting  a good bow. Jawge

[superdav95]

Too bad.  That would have been a sweet looking bow Ed.

[Hamish]

Ed, I found a nice looking log like your's, with snakey side to side bends. It was about 18" dia. I was so stoked about the awesome staves I was going to get out of it, that is until I tried to split it. It didn't want to split, just busted apart, ruined. I couldn't even get billets out of it. Subsequent layers of growth rings, the grain grew in opposite directions.

I ended up slabbing the undamaged, unsplit section into 2" thick boards. Even then the sides of the grain tried to pull itself apart(despite several thick coats of pva glue). Still usable for boards despite the cosmetic splits, but no good for bows.

[BowEd]

I see these type candidates for snaky bows in very large osage trees with trunks 3' across here.It's identified by the bark.Some large limbs way up in the tree also.
A bit of more work to get out of there but you never bow with wood sometimes.
Most times with osage the longitudal or length wise wood grain lines underneath the bark is more exaggerated than what the bark shows.
Scoring the log as deep as necessary before splitting is the best way to split these I've found.

[RyanY]

Truly a remarkable amount of direction change. Thanks for sharing.

[BowEd]

I'm no expert with these snaky bows but they always intrigue me.