Chris W.

There are several ways I can come home from work. Which way I take homeon any given day depends on my mood and the season. Many of the ways are pretty rural so I can see a bunch of wildlife late in the afternoon. Anyway, this afternoon I decided to take one of the more rural routes in order to get a gander at some turkeys that hang out in a certain area. I come over a hill and I see this crew workingin thetree line on this one farm. As I pass by, I notice they're working on clearing part of this tree line and, looking at the tree piles, something caught my eye. I pulled over, got out and struck up a chat with these guys. Turns out they're clearing so they can run some new water lines through the area. I askedwhat they had planned for the cleared trees and they repliedit was going to be stacked and burned. I asked andwas given permission to pick through the downedtrees and take whatever I wanted. Well, looky what I found .







All pieces are at least 68" long with no limbs or visible knots in the bark. The bigger halves I can easily quarter and get a total of four staves. I haven't beendown that road in weeks, soit was just shear luck Idecided to head home that way today. I'm tickled pink, tosay the least.

Kanga

Some people have all the luck

Those are gonna make some nice bows

bigcountry

Real nice latewood rings. I have just started getting an education on late/early wood.

Chris W.

Yeah, the late wood growth rings on these two are nice. There were a few othersmore towards the bottom of the piles that Ididn't have time to dig out this afternoon. I plan on stopping by there again tomorrow topick throughthe piles some more for a closer look.

bigcountry

Boy, that one stave looks like it will make a nice flatbow if it runs up like that the whole way. I am reading thru the trad bowyers bible vol one. I am trying to learn. I hope you start a build a long. I will be curious to see how they took out.

Matt / PA

Wow now you guys are speaking a different language.........You had me all the way up til you started talking latewood and staves and rings . All I heard was waawaaaaaaaa waawaa waaawa waaaaaaaaaaaawaaa (like Charlie Brown's teacher LOL)

I gather that's a good find and will make some great selfbows and that's all i want to know, I have enough stinkin' hobbies!

But I know enough to tell when someone is excited about a cool find so congrats!

Chris W.

I'll keep a build along in mind when they're ready. I've got the ends sealed and they'll be laying up in the garage for at least several months, to cure properly, before I start whittling on them. I couldprobably force dry them a little quicker but with osage you run the risk of it checking and splittingmore if you trycuring it too quickly. Inmiddle Tennessee, decently straight osage like that is quite a find, so I'd rather wait awhile thanriskdamaging it.

The late wood isthe nice dark orange rings. It's dense andvery hard stuff. Theearly growth is the thinner, lighter, whitish looking rings. It's moreporous and not as hard or dense as the late wood. With osage bowwood,nice, fat late woodgrowth rings are a goodthing.

bigcountry

Chris, which ring would you chase on that third picture? I am just curious how someone would cut a small diameter log like that.

Jasonlester

bigcountry,

Chase the first all yellow ring. you want all the diameter you can get. Also on some of these realy radiused staves can be decrowned to make things easier to deal with.

LBR

Great find! Man--super growth rings!

Brings back a sad memory for me. I was coming back from a tournament with a buddy a few years ago, and he wanted to take a "shortcut" (we were quite a ways from home). We got lost in a big way, wound up in a farming community. Saw piles of logs in the edge of a field as we passed--we looked at each other, he hit the brakes and backed up. HUGE osage logs, straight as a pin, obviously piled up to be burned. We started stopping at every house on that road--FINALLY we fould a lady who was home. She wasn't the land owner, but knew who was. We begged her to give the guy our phone numbers......but we never heard back from him. Literally several big truck loads of premium osage logs, and I know they went up in smoke. Makes me sick to think about it......

Glad to see you saved those Chris! Congrats on the find--hopefully you'll be able to dig out some more!

Chad