Need some advise....

[Uncle Russ]

Many thanks to Rick Evens!  

I recently received a nice Bamboo backed Osage stave from Rick that "will need to be dried under 'controlled' conditions before final tiller is done"....my question is how long does this "drying" take??
I have the stave in my Garage / Shop, stored flat, suspended on my overhead Rod & Reel Rack. The temperature in the shop is Thermostat controlled and typically set at 66*, except in Summer when I turn the Air Conditioning on.
.
The average relative humidity for the Columbia Basin is 82% and the only control I have on that is a small dehumidifier that, at times, seems almost useless as my little weatherman in the shop tells me it is around 66%..... It collects some water, but not a heck of a lot.
At least, not as much as I would expect.
 
Anyway, under the conditions I tried to describe above, how long should the Bow take to properly dry.
(Rick says the stave and backing were glued up about 10 years ago.)

Also, Rick recommended the book "Hunting the Osage Bow", and a DVD "Hunting the Bamboo Backed Bow", both available from 3Rivers.
Can you recommend anything else I should be reading, as this will be my very first attempt on my own.

Thanks, Uncle Russ...

[Fletcher]

I would not have thought humidity would be that high in Eastern Washington - pretty high to dry wood.
I use a stove pipe drier:

It is a couple of sections of 6" stove pipe with rods stuck through at 1 foot intervals about 4 " off the bottom
of the pipe.  It forms a horizontal shelf sort of like an oven rack.  I use it to ]dry staves as well as natural shoot arrow shafts.

I bought a 6" round stove pipe to 12" x 8" wall duct metal adapter which fits perfect around the housing of an electric heater that I bought to fit.

I set to heater on fairly low temp and low fan and let it run - sometimes for a week or more.

I have a moisture meter and I like to finish the wood when it is between 8% and 10% moisture content.  Much drier and it becomes very hard to work the wood.
Then I may dry the 90% stave a bit more to get it just under 8% and do the final tillering and then the oil finish.

Arrow shafts I tie in a bundle around a 3/4" straight rebar hunk and dry till they feel good.  I will stop and tweak for straight a few times along the way.
When done I may still have to hand straighten a bit and even use a bit of heat in nasty spots by wetting a bit with a damp cloth then twirling in a propane
torch out on the end of the flame.

Other methods will work too - hope this helps.

[rickevans]

go easy on the heat. I would start with a stove pipe heater like fletcher said, but maybe insead of teh heater just put a 40 watt bulb in for a while. If you do not have a moisture meter, you will be guessing at the final wood humidity...

[Longhunter]

If the bamboo backed stave was done 10 years ago it's dry. No need to dry it any more.

[Fletcher]

I thought he said he just recently received it.  Guess I assumed that it had just been made.

Longhunter is right, wood that has been natural cured more than probably 4 years would be fine in most but the high humidity climates.

Really old dry wood can be a bit harder to work with, but still fine with care and good tools.

[rickevans]

Remember gents, that glued up stave was in my basement office in Georgia for the last 10 years. It will take a little to get the moisture content down, will it not? Relative in the basement office is 70% according to my temp/humidity gauge.

[Uncle Russ]

Thanks for the replies!  

Rick....got myself a new Humidity (Gauge?) for the shop. A cheap one from Wal-Mart, but I'm sure it's better than that other old thing I had hanging in there.
According to the new gauge the Relative Humidity is right at 40% and the Barometric Pressure is 29.8....
That is already a big difference in the reading of the two gauges as the old one said 66 or 68.
(Are they gauges, meters, or just what the heck is the proper term?)

Also, I might add that the "heat" in the shop is electric heat, and I understand that that in itself will lower the humidity a little bit.
Do you, or anyone else, think a few months, say two or three, in the shop will dry the bow out to where I can work on it?

The Bow is being stored flat, just like my other two.
I have heard / read that storing a bow on its end, or tip is, for some reason, not good for the bow.
Don't know the truth in any of that, but I have always stored my bows flat just because I heard this once......

Uncle Russ...

[Fletcher]

Most definitely never store a bow on its tip.  It's own weight can warp the limb.

I am talking about a moisture meter - far different than a barometer or humidity meter.
It actually sticks probes into wood to tell the relative moisture content.

If that bow has really been on a shelf 10 years, the moisture should be out of it sufficiently to work a bow into tiller.
Go slow and easy to avoid cracking or crysaling from wood that is too dry.

[rickevans]

Russ...I'd wait about 10 days or so for the wood to acclimate to your temp/humidity. But I will defer to Fletcher and Longhunter as to readiness.  By the time you have the books, you will be ready to go.  Dean Torges has a method of tillering by facets, and it works very well and is simple (even I can do it!) to comprehend and apply. If you get the "Hunting the Osage Bow" and follow the tillering chapters, you will be good to go.

[rickevans]

Here is a link to my friend Dean Torges web page. He is discussing his book "Hunting the Osage Bow" and what he has learned since writing it, some decade plus years back.  Worth the read...dealing with tillering the "organic" bow.

http://www.bowyersedge.com/organic.html