Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: bubbles on April 22, 2014, 10:10:03 pm
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Hey guys -
So I kind of stupidly cut some wood that I wasn't familiar with. It looked like a nice straight stave, so I thought I'd give it a try. Seems like a hard wood. I noticed a bit of a smell as I was cutting it down. It would be later described as "old vomit" or "stinky socks". Either way, just working off the bark and splitting it, left me with everybody asking me why I smelled so bad at dinner. This stave has precede to stink up every room I leave it in, as well as the car I transported it in. It's now drying is a seldom used room in the garage. So, any ideas? Unfortunately my phone was dead when I was in the woods, so I couldn't grab pics of the buds. I will say, the buds looked very similar to viburnum buds. It's got some nice dark heartwood, and it's an understory tree - the tallest ones were around 20' high. It's growing in a fairly wet/swampy area, (spring and fall) but none of it grows where the water typically is. If nobody can figure it out, I'll get some pics of the leaves when I get a chance, when I go back out there. I'm in southern ontario.
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Looks like dogwood to me... :-\
DBar
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I was thinking black cherry. Josh
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I found some flowering dogwood pics that seem to have similar bark, but I couldn't find pics of the end cut to show the heart/sap ratio. It doesn't have the little lenticles that cherry's usually have. The smaller ones (1" to 2") had similar bark - as in there doesn't seem to be a period of smooth bark when it's just a sapling.
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I am working on a flowering dogwood right now, and have not noticed any unpleasant smell. It smells sort of faintly like flowers to me rather than old vomit. The heartwood on the piece I am working is also a lot smaller if you could even call it heartwood, more of a pith. . I'm a long way from southern ontario though.
I can go down to the basement and take a picture of the end of a good specimen of flowering dogwood after my phone charges a bit. Not debarked yet either. Have another smaller one debarked that I can take some pictures of.
There is a tiny dark brown pith running through the center, the wood is white, yellow, with hues of pink. Not much distinguishing between the heart and sapwood.
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Exactly whose vomit and socks are we talking about? ??? The overall described characteristics are of no tree I have ever seen in southern Ontario.
The cross section does look cherry like.
I've never seen a flowering Dogwood here and I don't think Dogwood grows heartwood like that or have that thicker inner bark.
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awwww! :-[ its black cherry i tried to make some arrows out of it before they were good but couldn't stand the smell not had good luck with it for bows they all dried up and broke it turns a beautiful bowl though O:)
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Haha, I was getting a lot of accusations of not showering. "its the wood I swear!"
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On that note the heartwood/sapwood and even the bark to some degree reminds me of black cherry. But I've never noted it to smell like vomit or old socks. Real mild odor unless you set it on fire, then it smells sweet, really pleasant smell to the smoke. We are smoking a turkey breast right now with some black cherry. If it smelled like vomit, I probably wouldn't cook food with it.
Set a little bit of it on fire and walk downwind from it a little bit. Cherry has such a specific smell, it should smell really pleasant and sweet.
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Box Elder? Does it have any red streaking through it? The bark doesn't exactly match the stuff I am familiar with, but it is a lowland/swamp tree and does from time to time have a bad smell.
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That's black cherry, and yes, it stinks.
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Dogwood with bark on and off, inside and outside surfaces.
(http://oi59.tinypic.com/211pate.jpg)
Dogwood endgrain from cutting the end off a stave. No signficant color variation between heartwood and sapwood.
(http://oi57.tinypic.com/2612gkp.jpg)
Dogwood edge grain from the stave I am currently working. Again no real heartwood color variation. It is the other side of the barked stave in the first picture. Again no real variation in heartwood/sapwood.
(http://oi57.tinypic.com/3505itz.jpg)
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, the bark is a dead ringer, but no dice on the wood. The one problem is, I feel like noting to myself that the buds were very viburnum like, and opposite, which would eliminate cherry. Maybe I was grabbing a nearby branch from another tree. Man I wish I had my camera with me.
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My first thought was persimmon but I just worked on a well seasoned persimmon bow and didn't notice a foul smell.
Buds and leaves would help the ID.
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I'm used to persimmon looking very white all the way through it except for a very black pith in it's center. It looks sort of like cherry but the bark is a bit different and the wood is on a different level of hardness and resistance to splitting than cherry ever thought of being.
If it happens to be cherry I would go overkill on sealing the ends and backs. The stuff around here checks like crazy even in our humid Georgia weather.
Also dogwood does have a heartwood, it just needs to be brought out with stain to see it. If you do find some flowering dogwood straight enough and not too twisted that far north, I have really liked working with it so far.
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There is a shrub that grows up here called Witherod or Wild Raisin ( it's a Viburnum) that can be described as have a smell like old socks. The wood has a small amount of sapwood with orange/brown heartwood that produces clumps of berries that turn dark blue in the Fall. It is an extremely elastic wood but I have never seen any growing larger than 2" in diameter and maybe 10' tall, I made a bow out a piece one time that hardly took any set. Black Haw is related and grows bigger, doesn't grow up here though, and is supposed to have a strong Goat like odor.
P.S. Sorry, it's not the Black Haw that has the Goat like smell it's the Nannyberry, it's also a Viburnum. It can reach heights of 30'.
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Well, I think I got a positive ID on it now. Got back out and snapped some pics. I don't know what possessed me not to look at the top of the tree. Had I done that I would have known right away - but I guess I've never seen the fully mature tree of this species, but I have enjoyed its fruit many a time.
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Nannyberry! (Good job Marc!) You were saying it's good bow wood? Or was that the Black Haw?
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Those buds are very typical viburnum as are the fruiting stems. Bubbles, I've not made a bow from black haw but I'd say it would be marginal as bow wood. I have made arrows from black haw but there are other woods I'd use before it.
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Both the Black Haw and the Nannyberry don't grow up here but what you have in your hand in the first pic looks a lot like Witherod and it's that species we have up here. The branches and fruiting ends look exactly the same as well. Witherod is some of the toughest wood I have ever come across and if the Nannyberry has the same toughness then it should make great bows. The only problem with Witherod is that it always seems to grow in a spiral and the back starts to fail after awhile, it doesn't pull a splinter but the back ring starts to sort of unwind in a spiral. A rawhide backing fixes that though. I would certainly try making a bow out of the wood
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Allright. It definitely looks good with the dark heartwood.
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We have our own share of stinky wood down here, but if that stuff turns out good would be willing to trade a piece of hedge for some of that stuff;^)
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Ohhhhh, the illustrious osage.....
We'll see how it goes.
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Well, I finally got to working on this lady. After a bunch of heating and steaming to line everything up, A chased back ring(not a fun thing to do on diffuse porous wood) got to tillering, and here she is at 53#@ 25" - 55" ntn. I haven't really shot it in yet, but it seems to be holding together. Took a bit more follow than I had hoped (2"), but it also started with about 1" of deflex, which I tried to heat out with dry heat, but I think it ended up coming back. I didn't heat treat the entire bow as I wanted to see how the wood would do on it's own. Shoots pretty good right now. I think it will look pretty sweet when all the finish is on. It could almost pass for yew with the sap/heartwood combo.
-- Oh and I definately could not work on this with anybody home. Got yelled at many a time. Had to remove the shaving immediately after I was done and make sure all the windows were open. Anytime you start taking off shaving, that smell comes right back.
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Bend is looking good on that stinky stick.
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Haha, the wife's not happy, because the whole house stinks, and apparently I stink as well. :)
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While it may be true that your bow stinks, the tillering sure doesn't!
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It's Black Cherry. Stinks like crap and the fruit isn't much better.