Sagely stuff...

[Onebowonder]

My nephew and I, with the ever so very much appreciated help of Patrick (lebhuntfish), split out a bunch of Osage staves and billets this last Sunday.  These all came from a tree from the Sage grove behind my brother Nathan's house. 

The poor tree had been lightning struck and so had to be harvested.  The lightning strike blew the bark clean off of the tree up to about 7 - 9 feet from the ground.  We cut it down the next day.  I'm afraid I wasted a goodly bit of the trunk wood because I assumed that the lightning caused shatter cracks in it were too deep.  They were not more than a half inch deep, but I did not notice until I'd sawn it into small bits for the firewood pile. 

Oh well...  We still harvested a goodly number of staves (18) and billets (14), some of which it will likely be possible to split out more without being too greedy after they all dry! 

The ring counts look pretty good without being impossible to chase!  Even I might be able to get a bow out of some of these...


Onebow

[simson]

that's a nice haul  ...  lucky dog!

[alwayslookin]

I see some serious character bows coming out of that batch.

[blackhawk]

I see lots of heat gun time young grasshoper!!!      Good thing osage corrects like butter under the gun

[Danzn Bar]

I've heard that lightening struck trees can make the best bows.....Great haul!
DBar

[JonW]

Eric start with the one on the far right. Looks to be an easy one

[mikekeswick]

Yep the one on the right gets my vote too!!!

[Pappy]

Nice haul, looks like you have some challenging work ahead of you. Look like some great rings and that is always a plus. The cool thing about Osage is you can start with the nastiest looking piece and with a little patients you can turn out some great bows. 
 Pappy

[Aaron H]

I see lots of potential

[Eric Krewson]

Just a work of caution; I took a beautiful cherry log to be milled into future flintlock gun stock slabs, it to had been hit by lightning but the wood looked perfect.

After I had it milled into slabs I had the wood on my trailer on a hot day, fearing checking I watered the wood down really well, covered it with wet leaves and left it be processed the next day.

When I came out the next day I found that the water had run through the planks, there were thousands of tiny cracks in the wood that you couldn't see but the water exposed. It was like a bomb had gone off in the trunk of the tree.

When I mentioned this damage to the guys on a gun building site I found that others had experienced the same thing with lighting killed trees.

You might get lucky but all this was toast;

[Onebowonder]

Just a work of caution; I took a beautiful cherry log to be milled into future flintlock gun stock slabs, it to had been hit by lightning but the wood looked perfect.

After I had it milled into slabs I had the wood on my trailer on a hot day, fearing checking I watered the wood down really well, covered it with wet leaves and left it be processed the next day.

When I came out the next day I found that the water had run through the planks, there were thousands of tiny cracks in the wood that you couldn't see but the water exposed. It was like a bomb had gone off in the trunk of the tree.

When I mentioned this damage to the guys on a gun building site I found that others had experienced the same thing with lighting killed trees.

You might get lucky but all this was toast;

Yes, that was why I was concerned about the trunk part that I wasted.  It had shatters in it every 2 inches or so all around the trunk, but they were all linear and only went into the wood about as deep as the sap wood.  The rest of the wood does not have these, but I guess there could be stuff I can't really see right now too!  I have heard both good and ill about lightning struck wood.  Some have said that the key is to get the wood cut down and detached from the root system right away so that it does not sit there and try to 'heal' the damage done by the lightning.  I'm really not sure, but plan to find out...

I've used lightning struck hickory before.  It had these feint blue-ish gray stripes in it that I was told were caused by the lightning.  It was completely undamaged by the lightning as far as the quality of the wood.  We cut lams from that hickory that were barely any thicker than a playing card but were plenty tuff!

It's really sad to here the story about the cherry you lost!  That stuff comes dearly priced most the time.  Hopefully my Osage will fare a bit better...


OneBow

[Eric Krewson]

Here is what I saw on the underside of the boards the next day;

[Danzn Bar]

Nice haul, looks like you have some challenging work ahead of you. Look like some great rings and that is always a plus. The cool thing about Osage is you can start with the nastiest looking piece and with a little patients you can turn out some great bows. 
 Pappy

I agree with ya.............
Dbar