New at this

[ABE]

I cut a large hickory down a year and half ago (a neighbors tree that they needed cleared for their new house) with a trunk about 3 foot wide. Split into about five staves glued the ends and let them sit in my garage. I only got about half the trunk because the work was a bit more than I expected. The stave were already large I thought I could get two or more stave out of each split. I went to split them this winter and well they ended up as fire wood. My first mistake was I tried to split it from the end and I couldn't control the way it split. I've been told from a friend that I need to start in the middle. The logs are too big to cut with my 14" band saw. Should I've split them when they were green?? Are they a loss?

I've been told that hickory, unlike other woods you want to build your bow on cambium not the hart wood like Osage or other woods. Each of these stave could produce two outer stave and a piggyback stave. Although I've read that piggyback stave are a bad idea.

Thanks, ABE.

[Jeff Durnell]

Abe, you don't HAVE to start in the middle, but I have on ocassion when there's a knot or something there that I want to be sure to go around to the right of, etc. But I split hickory from the ends all the time. I usually split them green, within a day of cutting them, mostly because the bark comes off easiest then.

As you know, hickory has strongly interlocking grain. When you try to split it, all those 'stringers' try to hold the pieces together and sometimes that changes the direction of the split. If you split slowly and cut the stringers with an axe as you go, you can keep the split headed in a direction you like, more or less. Sometimes it tails off and you lose a stave. No biggie.

If you know that the log, quarter splits or whatever, have a good straight grain to them and you want to more accurately 'predict', or dictate, how the split goes, you can snap a chalk line down the piece and cut a kerf an inch deep or better with a circular saw for its length. The split will usually follow that kerf well. You may still have to cut a couple stringers with the axe, but they'll be generally fewer and less damaging. Kerfing can help assure that you get two good staves out of a piece that's borderline wide enough.

The reason I said 'if they have good, straight grain to them', is because I wouldn't cut a tree with spiraling grain, violate the grain by kerfing and splitting along a straight line, and be surprised when it failed.

Hickory bows are usually made from the sapwood of the tree. Osage bows are made from the heartwood. The cambium layer isn't generally used in either of them.