Holy Cow!!!

[triggerfinger]

Well I went to splitting on those osage logs, and im not sure if you guys have noticed, but this hobby is a lot of work  .   I got one that was beautifully straight and got three nice staves from it.  The second one was like pulling teeth from a grizzly bear, that thing was twisty.  The third was like something from a horror novel, I was thinking of boxing it up and shipping it to gstoneberg 

put spray polyurethane on the new faces.  Ended up with 6 staves.

[gstoneberg]

Welcome to my world.  It was so pretty standing there in tree form, looked straight as a string.  Then I sweat like a butcher cutting and loading it.  More sweating to split it...only to find it's a propeller, or full of borers, or water damaged.  Like to drive a man to drink.

[Pat B]

That's where learning to read the bark comes in handy. If you know the wood is snakey even though the log is straight you can work with the snakes.   You do know you are now required to post pics of these snakey staves. 

[triggerfinger]

.   You do know you are now required to post pics of these snakey staves. 

Ill work on making it happen tomorrow. 

also learned an important lesson, when hammering on metal make sure its softer than the hammer.  I was sending shrapnel from the back of my axe everywhere.  I was wearing shorts and my legs looked like I kicked a porcupine. I literally ruined both of my socks from blood running down my legs.   I should have quit but had to finish cause i had no other way to do it and am not headed to osage country any time soon.  So basically my bow building hobby depended on it.

[osage outlaw]

Wear some safety glasses when splitting it.  A piece of my hammer head chipped off and hit me in the bridge of the nose.  A half inch either way, and I would have lost an eye.

[rainman]

Axe heads are not made to do hammer work usually.  Get a sledge hammer at a garage sale for 5 bucks and save yourself and the axe.

[mullet]

Get those twisty ones cut into boards.

[Bow Nut]

dont cut thouse twisty one up.  I will trade you some straight hickory for them or some already cut osage.  Most all my bows have started from a twisty stave.  steam goes along way with osage and I dont mind the extra work considering I cant go in my back yard and cut the stuff.  the only place I have to cut it is in oklahoma kinda a long drive for some staves.  sounds good about saturday.  If  you want I can show you my steamer setup and how I get my staves straight and recurve them as well.  If you ever have a few days to spare while you are here you could come over for a while shave and scrape a little and leave with a bow.  up to you.

[triggerfinger]

Ill throw those twisty ones in the truck and haul em up there tomorrow.  If you still want em ill gladly swap.  I may wanna make something snaky later, but I have access to a fairly endless supply of this stuff, and i wanna learn to make a good bow before i go on to pretty.  Ill pm you my phone number and you can gimme a call sat

[Bow Nut]

ok sounds good

[Michael C.]

Did you cut the trees down with an axe or a chainsaw? I think chainsaws are probably easier but I've been to stupid/cheap to go buy one yet.

[triggerfinger]

Michael,  I dont own a chain saw either, but borrowed one, which was way better than the bow saw I had planned to use 

[Michael C.]

Haha a bow saw is what made me buy an axe It kept gumming up in the sap and getting jammed when the trees would start leaning. I had no idea what I was doing when I first started all this crazy bow making business and had to learn a lot of stuff the hard way. I'm sure I still do things that would make a lot of people on here look at me like I was an idiot.

[triggerfinger]

I was headed up to my grandpas farm and he asked what i was gonna use to cut the trees.  I told him I was gonna stop at lowes and buy a bow saw and he gave  that "are you stupid" look.  and insistef i take his chain saw