Gettin' Silly with Wood

 Good Lord, what could that title mean...?

Not actually from my woodlot, but a nice huge old oak behind a Biggby.

But seriously folx, as you know I'm a bit of a tree geek*, and as such I'm endlessly fascinated by these woody giants and always want to experiment with them. Today I investigated the properties of five different hardwoods: shagbark hickory, American beech, American basswood, eastern hophornbeam, and musclewood.

So background: I've been low-key obsessed with making my own bow and using it for hunting. You may think, "Well gee Rick, go get a stick and some string!" but oh no no, my sweet summer child, it's much more involved than that. The first part of the process is to find a log of the correct length, then split it lengthwise into two or more "staves" that then form the basis for the bow.** The trick is to find the kind of wood that's flexible, long-grained, straight, and without any big knots. Really the best wood for this is found in the trunks of hardwoods (oak, hickory, etc.), although cedars and other long-grain conifers will work as well.

I went out to my favorite hunting spot, which has several woodlots of mixed deciduous trees in various stages of succession. I'd already scoped out the different trees I wanted to investigate, and thankfully there were plenty of deadfall and standing dead trees to sustainably source - I'm not big on chopping down whole, healthy trees just to satisfy my curiosity.*** I had a few trees on my "list" that I couldn't get - white ash, because the living trees were either too tall or just saplings, and the deadfall trunks are huge; black locust, because there don't seem to be any mature examples in that area (since black locust is invasive, I have no qualms about cutting down live trees); oak, simply because I didn't have time to get up into the mature stands and search for downed limbs. Processing and moving five species was definitely more than enough work for one trip; there's no reason I can't go back out and search for examples of oak on another foray.

I managed to get my samples home and set them up in the garage. 

From left to right: musclewood, eastern hophornbeam,
shagbark hickory, American basswood, American beech.

First up was eastern hophornbeam (Ostrya virginiana). This is a medium-sized, upland tree, also called "ironwood" due to its hardness and use for tool handles. Its name is a combination of "hops", due to its seed capsules resemblance to the beer additive, and "hornbeam", because of the smooth, hornlike finish of its branches. Its leaves look like a cross between beech and elm, double-toothed and papery. Its bark is light brown and shaggy, like shredded paper. The sample I found in the woods was a full trunk, about 1' in diameter and about 20 feet long; it had been snapped down as part of a trail-clearing project. I cut about an 6' section; cutting was smooth, but took a lot of sawing. The wood was uniform cream-white inside, the most attractive of all the samples. "Gee," I said, "This should split really nicely"; I imagined it would be a close, straight-grained interior that would require some effort but otherwise present few problems.

Boy was I wrong! It turned out to be the messiest, most difficult split I'd ever attempted. Hophornbeam turned out to have a "strappy grain" that wouldn't split in an orderly fashion, trapping my metal splitters. It reminded me of red mulberry, just even denser, and with narrower "straps". The piece I'd selected was twisted as well, which is bad for certain bows, but hopefully not as problematic for a traditional American Indian self-bow (which is the kind I'm planning). There are ways to untwist a stave, it's just a hell of a lot easier to find a straight piece to begin with. At any rate I abandoned the split for the nonce, so I could focus on the other four pieces. 

Pictured: yikes!

Second up was American beech (Fagus grandifolia).  American beech is a huge, long-lived, elegant hardwood immediately recognizable for its smooth blue-gray bark, looking somewhat like elephant skin and attracting
generations of kids to carve their names in it. The leaves are symmetrical, almond-shaped, and wave-toothed, and like oak leaves tend to cling to the tree after turning brown; the fruits are smallish,

with spiky hulls that split to show three triangular green-brown nuts. The twigs grow in a zigzag formation, and are tipped with leathery-brown buds that look a bit like unicorn horns. I'd say the beech trunk I found was about 2' in diameter. This was another full trunk, also smashed down by whoever built that trail (it was a seriously huge trail - he made it to get his tractor up into the hills so he could plant a food plot. This was on State land, mind you). I ended up cutting a 6-foot-long piece down to 3 feet. Cutting through it seemed to take some effort, as though the wood was "spongy"; I anticipated at least a weird split, maybe even some cracking.

Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be the easiest split of the bunch! I tapped in my starter splitter, and immediately the trunk obliged with a straight, board-flat split - it practically leapt apart. The interior wood was an odd gray-pink-white color, so there may have been some rot setting in, but the wood was still sound. I'm excited to go back to the original piece and see how long of a split I can make.

Pictured: the best split!

I decided to take a break and investigate American Basswood (Tilia americana). Basswood is actually known for not being a particularly hard wood, better for carving than for making handles and bows; its big claim to fame is the inner bark, which can be processed and turned into bast fiber for weaving clothesmaking (hence the short-vowel "bass" of basswood). The leaves are large-to-medium, smooth, small-toothed, and lopsided. The fruits are small, hard orbs accompanied by yellow, narrow "flag" leaflets.  Its outer bark is smooth and gray, dotted with "dimples", and has a chalky feel; as the tree matures its bark becomes rougher and darker. It is a medium- to large- tree, with several arching trunks sprouting from one base. All in all basswood is a very useful, medicinal tree that unfortunately is treated like junk, tending to line road and farm ditches and the edges of marshes. The pieces I found were roadside debris from a brush machine, unceremoniously torn off their base. I selected the largest piece, about 6"-8" in diameter and 3' long; it was pretty split and shredded, it's fibrous yellow wood hanging out like frayed rope-end.

My first task was to collect the bark. I used the edge of my hatchet to gently peel the bark, doing my best not to leave any long strands clinging to the wood; the piece was in pretty rough shape, but I managed to peel some fairly good pieces. I took these and coiled them up inside a cooler, which I then filled with cold water from my rainbarrel. This soaking process is called "retting". The trick is to leave them sitting for 8 weeks, replacing the water when it gets too cloudy; the bark essentially rots and separates, after which it is collected and dried. With any luck, by about July I'll have a bit of nice fiber to weave.

Back to the branch: it was already pretty badly splintered, so I just helped the process along; it basically peeled apart. Maybe a nice, well-cut trunk could have been used for something, but this piece was firewood.

Top: the fibrous wood of basswood.
bottom: a pile of peeled basswood bark.

Next up: musclewood (Carpinus caroliniana). Its real name is "American Hornbeam", but...that's really similar to "Eastern hophornbeam" (see above). Just to make things even more confusing, both trees are related, both are called "ironwood", both have hoplike seed pods, and their leaves are impossible to tell apart! Thankfully, there are some differences: hophornbeam grows in uplands, while musclewood grows in soggier patches (although their ranges will overlap); hophornbeam grows straight and tall, while musclewood meanders all over the place. Lastly, musclewood's bark is pretty unique: though smooth like beech†, it has large, fluted rumples running up its length, giving it a muscular, almost animalistic quality. Hence, "musclewood". Depending on your aesthetic preference, you might even find it eerie, as though the whole tree might flex or slither at any moment. The wood itself is deceptively light, almost "corky"-

feeling from the outside; I was anticipating it would prove cracky and brittle when I tried to split it.

Thankfully, it was a great split! The yellowish wood is somewhat fibrous, but nowhere near as fiendishly strappy as its cousin; it split quite readily, and I ended up with two halves and only the hint of a twist. The piece has a bit of a bend, but is long enough that I could get at least two nice staves out of it. I was surprised at how strong and flexible it was, to the point where I could fit my forearm, elbow to wrist, between the halves as I split it (I felt like I was in a giant clothespin). All in all, a nice surprise, and perhaps my best bet for getting a bow out of the five samples.

Looks a little shaggy, but it's a great split. I can
probably stagger the staves to avoid the knot in the middle.

Last but definitely not least, Shagbark Hickory (Carya ovata). Hickory, along with beech and oak, is one of the heavy-hitters of the northern deciduous forest: reaching over 100 feet tall, living for hundreds of years, and acting as an oasis for hundreds of different species, from birds to squirrels, beetles to fungi. Shagbark itself is very distinctive, with a massive straight trunk covered in dark, hanging strips of bark, some over three feet long. The leaves are composed of 5 symmetrical, untoothed leaflets with the outer three being the longest, sometimes up to 24". The green, bilobed fruits grow in pairs, turning black and releasing their rock-hard nut in the fall. The wood itself is pale, heavy, and strong as hell - shagbark ranks among the hardest woods, making it a challenge to turn on a lathe. Thankfully I would only be splitting it with hand tools.

I predicted a somewhat tough but straightforward split, and I wasn't proven wrong. The only problem was the huge knot in the middle of my sample. You see, though my hickory piece was as long and heavy as most of the others, it was actually a limb, not a trunk; while hickory trunks are straight, their limbs splay out in wild, scraggly chaos. Trying to find a straight limb of any length is next to impossible. Instead of trying to bull my way through the knot, I cut my losses (literally) and started again on my new piece. The splitting itself wasn't hard, but the piece was badly twisted. Not much use for anything except firewood. Thankfully I'd harvested several smaller, straighter pieces for use as tool handles, so at least I got something out of it.

Not a great split; you can see the knots on the ends of the two
bottom pieces. Hickory limbs are pretty gnarly!

So there you have it, folks! Five species investigated for hardness, flexibility, straightness, and possible use for bow staves. I'd like to end this by saying that, despite all my talk about "usefulness" of trees, I don't measure the worth of natural products by how we humans can "use" them - all trees are living creatures of a sort, and as such deserve respect. Wild things are important just because they are, not because of their utility. This is why I try to harvest all my samples as responsibly as I can, using deadfall as much as possible and avoiding cutting down whole, live trees. Stay tuned for future posts about my adventures in bowmaking, and hopefully a nice big post about my philosophy of relating to the natural world.

Rick Out.

*Or is it nerd? I always thought "nerd" indicated knowledge about a particular subject, while "geek" implies application...so a tree nerd would know all about the different gymnosperms and angiosperms, etc., while a tree geek can make a tonic out of sweet birch. But I guess drawing that distinction makes me a "word geek" too, so there you go.

**I'm making a very simple kind of bow called a "self bow", where the back and front of the bow are from the same piece of wood, as opposed to a "compound bow" that's made of two or more bonded materials...but that's all fodder for another post!

***I could write a whole post...essentially, I think the way we currently relate to trees in development and infrastructure is bullshit. Probably not a revolutionary idea, but there are several specific points that I find really grating. Someday, Gentle Reader.

†...Which also lends it the nicknames, "blue beech" and "water beech".