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Harvesting hickory

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Muskyman:
Big tree or little tree?
I went out back today and I have some 6-8 inch hickory trees that I can harvest
Or would you think a tree of 16-20 inches or so would be better for bow staves?
I’ll probably just take one or two of the smaller ones because there’s just something about a big old 100 ft hickory tree that makes me not want to cut it down..
Now there are 2 or 3 of the big ones, sooooo

Pat B:
The 6" to 8" would work fine but, depending on where you live it might be too late in the season for the bark to slip exposing a pristine bow back. You may now have to use a draw knife to remove the bark and cambium possibly damaging the back.

superdav95:
I rarely cut down anything bigger then 8-10” in hickory.  The nice thing with slightly smaller diameter trees is that sometimes you can incorporate a little of the heart wood in the handle area and fades for a cool effect.  The bigger trees are harder to deal with but do give you a flatter back technically but at 1.5 -1.75” at the widest section of the bow it’s still fairly flat.  It will come down to tiller in the end with any bow.    Pats right about the bark too. Much easier in the early summer to slip right off.  I’ve done some late season too but harder to remove bark as was said.  Not impossible but harder.  It can still be done to get a pristine back.  I’ve used a dull spoon after removing most of the bark while the back is still soft to get all the cambium off.  Also You can just get most of the bark off leaving a little of the cambium layer in the lows spots.   This effect of leaving the low spots with a little cambium turns dark and also can look cool.  Doesn’t effect the performance at all. 

Eric Krewson:
This time of year, I would cut small stuff, I cut one large wind toppled hickory in late July, never again. It took me two weeks to strip 17 staves of the bark and cambium. If you are just stripping a few staves with a drawknife it isn't so bad.

On big trees I halve them with a chainsaw instead of splitting them, after they are in half they split fairly easily.

Here is the result of splitting two large 7' hickory logs to a size where I could drag the parts off a high ridge to my truck. I split the heart wood off some of them to lighten the load, they still weighed about 50# each, that is an F-250 pick-up bed that makes them look smaller than they are.

Eric Krewson:
I pop a chalk line on hickory and cut a kirf on them with a skill saw to split them easily and uniformly.

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