When iis it right?

[wormbobskey]

I recently cut some osage for bows and have split them into staves and sealed the ends. I can't afford a moisture meter and was wondering if anyone could give me any ideas on when these staves will be ready to work on. I measured and weighed each stave and wrote this in my notebook and on the stave. My plan is to weigh the staves again to see how much weight they have lost in a month. Will this work? I have them stored in my trapping shack, up in the rafters where the temperature is around 90-95 degrees during the day.  I don't want to start working on these bows before they are ready, but also don't want wait any longer than I have to. Thanks for any help you can give me. Worm :-)

[TheBowhunter]

you have said the best way to tell worm with iut moisture meter by the weight, let it loose I beleive itis about sixty percent of its weight I will look it tonight when I get home right now I am at work.

[wormbobskey]

Well all of my work on those osage staves is gone. Found out the other day that they are infested with flathead beatles. From the looks of the wood, they have been in there for a while. I tried to spray the wood with insect killer, but it didn't help any. The larva simply ate into the wood deeper. I went ahead and saturated each hole I found with raid and than pluged off the holes. I'm hoping that at least it will kill them and they won't be able to spread. Worm

[TheBowhunter]

How big are your stave wormbobskey? maybe if you have enough wood you can go towards the core more to make the bow. reduce them by several rings.

[wormbobskey]

TheBowhunter, I think the beetles only went an inch into the wood at the most. Most of the staves are about 3 inches thick and 3 or 4 inches wide at the back. After I had posted my reply I started thinking about maybe making some two piece bows out of the staves if they were long enough to make them into billets. Thats how I started my bow making, was with staves to short to make one piece bows so I used 1" diameter conduit to glue up the billets. I still have some bows I made several years ago that shoot pretty good. The only major problem that I had was that I didn't put any deflex into them so now they have almost 2 inches of set in the limbs. The staves still won't be ready to work on until this winter. I might try one of the smaller staves and see what happens. If nothing else I will get some more experience working with the growth rings. Worm

[mparks]

In "Hunting the Osage Bow", Dean Torges recomends reducing the stave to near finished dimensions(still not to floor tillered stage) and then drying in a drying box at 90deg.