HHB + Bugs =

[Marc St Louis]

I was asked to make a short, wide limb, low draw weight, native style bow not long ago.  I had a couple staves left from a fairly large tree, it was about 12" in diameter at the butt, I cut about 15 years ago so I picked one of those.  I needed this type of stave for the low crown it would give me.  I roughed the bow out, the bark was still on, and tillered it out.  As I approached full draw I started to remove the bark.  That's when I saw this



I was a bit perturbed when I saw that.  I have been cutting and making bows out of Ironwood for a long time and I have never come across even 1 bug track.  Insects up here just don't seem to like HHB, except for that one.  The track was old and the bug long gone, it could be it started to chew on this tree when it was still alive.

[PatM]

I'm surprised by this observation.  It seems what I believe are sawflies love HHB where I live and in fact everywhere I've seen it. They seem to be the reason for the brown steaks often found throughout the wood and the often black inclusions where it appeared one of them died without exiting.
  I think they only eat cambium or inner bark and don't actually get into the wood itself though.

[Dakota Kid]

I found an awesome american hornbeam stave at a campsite once. Someone was attempting to cut one about 5 feet off the ground. They probably just wanted to test the new camping saw they got at walmart. They gave up about halfway and attempted to break it. It split dead center down the middle better than any stave I ever split. It was dead and dried at the top but green at the bottom. I had the stave roughed out by the time we left the campsite. I noticed very similar bug tracks but it looked like the tree attempted to heal itself. It was raised like a scar not grooved so I decided to finish the bow. Three shots into the break in and ba-wham!! It broke right along the bug track. It broke clean into two pieces which is not typical of hornbeam. It's so fibrous that most often it won't come apart even after twisting it around 3 or 4 times. I watch for those little tracks a lot more carefully now.

[bubbles]

HHB was my very first attempt at a wood bow. Broke just about every rule there is.  Dead whitewood, (hhb) held about a foot off the forest floor by other logs. Who knows how long it was dead for. I think I made it 58" ntn too. The bugs certainly liked this one! I'm dow here in southern Ontario.

[Pappy]

They love it in Tennessee, I try and debark as soon as I can here.
   Pappy

[Marc St Louis]

I have cut dead HHB up here and they did not have any bug holes.  Elm on the other hand are tasty to the Powder Post Beetle.  White Ash also has an insect larvae that loves to eat the cambium but I've never had to worry about Ironwood.

[Eric Krewson]

Here is a hickory bow failure due to powder post beetles. The stave only had a couple of tiny holes on the surface so I thought I could get away with making a bow from the wood, nope.......

 

[bowmo]

MOST of the HHB here in northern Illinois has those. They get into the tree's like as soon as they die and into living trees on occasion too. I have a really hard time finding ones that are any good round these parts.

[Pat B]

I've seen similar "tracks" in ash.