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Main Boards => The Bowyer's Bench => Topic started by: halfseminole on September 23, 2015, 03:06:00 PM

Title: Incense cedar?
Post by: halfseminole on September 23, 2015, 03:06:00 PM

I have one straight and one recurved 6'board of this stuff.  Hickory backed, would it make a decent bow, or do I need to go looking again for something?

Title: Re: Incense cedar?
Post by: Sam Harper on September 23, 2015, 03:35:00 PM

If by "incense cedar," you mean the same thing as aromatic cedar, yes you can back it with hickory and make a good bow, but it's tricky to tiller.  You have to do a really good job of it or it will fail in compression.

Title: Re: Incense cedar?
Post by: halfseminole on September 23, 2015, 04:21:00 PM

It's deep purple-red with wide rings and frequent knots like some ERC.  Dunno if that helps.

Title: Re: Incense cedar?
Post by: LittleBen on September 23, 2015, 10:10:00 PM

Aromatic cedar is ERC as far as I can figure. Incense cedar is an actual cedar from the west coast, but I've seen at least a few references call ERC incense cedar.

Never used the actual incense cedar, only ERC.

ERC is decent, but from the numbers incense cedar does not look terribly promising.

Title: Re: Incense cedar?
Post by: Pat B on September 24, 2015, 01:58:00 PM

Incense cedar(Calocedrus decurrens) is related to cypress. It may work for  sinew backed bow but would probably be iffy for a selfbow.

Title: Re: Incense cedar?
Post by: newhouse114 on September 24, 2015, 07:28:00 PM

They call it pencil wood out here on the coast. Very brittle with very little flex. I know that western red, and white have been used for bows by certain indigenous peoples.

Title: Re: Incense cedar?
Post by: LittleBen on September 24, 2015, 08:09:00 PM

My guess is that what Ed has is ERC. A pic would let us know for sure.