DISASTER!

[Josh B]

Thanks for the sentiment fellas.  I've been to town and talking with some parents.  It would appear that I'm going to have some help this winter cutting hedge.  The guilty parties' dads are gonna be coming along to make sure their sons replace every stave with three.  It doesn't quite make up for the old super seasoned stuff, but its more than I figured on.  You can bet that some of the replacement Osage will be off the island to.  There is some fine hedge on that island!  Thanks for all the kind offers fellas.  I still have a couple dozen staves of questionable quality and all the pending Osage bows that were ordered have already been roughed in and were in the shop.  So I'm not totally wiped out.  But what a staggering blow nonetheless!  Thanks again fellas.  Josh

[Joec123able]

WOW sorry to hear that Don't know what I'd do in that situation maybe grab a burning Osage stave and knock there heads in with it

[mullet]

Josh;
I'm glad to hear there are still some parents that care how their kids act. You'll probably end up with one or two apprentences before this is all over.

[Poggins]

Sounds like some boys are going to learn to respect other's property , by the time they get through their first weekend of handling osage they will know how much those staves ment to you , a lot of hard work goes in to what we do .
Glad to hear you still had some wood to work with , I ran out of seasoned wood and building my stash back up , never again , I'll cut some every year now .

[Trapper Rob]

I'm with Eddie on that one I'd be doing some whipping then we'd go cut some wood.

[Badly Bent]

Man Josh that pic and story is depressing, feel bad for ya brother. Like how your dealing with it, some valuable lessons are gonna be learned by those boys. Don't treat em' to nice either cause one day one of em' might wanna date your daughter and he'll know better than to be disrespectful to her out of fear of you.
 Work them hard like a warden Doc.

[sleek]

Hopefully they will turn out good hard workers. With a little luck this will work out better than you had hoped and one or two will take a liking to this and want to learn more. The others will hopefully be worked so hard and hate you and never show up again. If you get 3 staves for every one burnt that's 120 osage staves. You won't be to bad off...

[KrisDelger]

Just make sure you blindfold them before taking them to your harvesting grounds! otherwise they'll know where your standing stash is! Also ya never know a few of them might catch the bug and you'll end up with a legion of kids wanting to learn the craft. Good luck to you, and many condolences for your stash it's a real shame to lose that precious of material.

[Cameroo]

Pretty sure I would have gone full-on red zone if I was in your shoes.  Probably would have blacked out and woke up in jail.

How tragic... 

[Fred Arnold]

I can't (can) imagine the feelings that were going through your head when you discovered what happened. What a sickening feeling that must have been (is). I experienced a similar but not quite as devastating occurrence last month when a grown up visiting the house took one of my osage longbows, the first successful one I ever built, off the wall and tried to string it up backwards. Snapped the top limb right in half. No offer or agreement on compensation on his part.

[Weylin]

There are no words... 

[steve b.]

Wow.  This one really got me going.  I just read the story to my family.  Ummm--I think I'd require some of the firebugs to be MMA sparing partners.  Sorry.  Let me know if you want any PNW staves, free of charge.

[criveraville]

What Cam said!! Or as George likes to say, "that's just Ducky!!!"

Josh, that's just well speechless I would say. Not much you can say.. You need to go and reprimand their kindergarten teachers. Every last one. I bet they messed up!!

Cipriano

[BowEd]

That really sucks Josh.Your daugther told em too yet.

[Pappy]

That stinks,glad I had a son,I don't think I could stand all them Young guys hanging around,I had a lot of them hanging out with Beau  at the Cabin when he was a teenanger but they all knew the rules and for some reason seemed to be scared of me and what I would do if the messed up. Must have been something I said.
   Pappy