# Dog Bone Wood



## Byron Barker (Mar 1, 2020)

Bit of a long story, but sort of worth it. I teach bow making off and on and get referred students (mostly foreigners) by foreigners living on the island off and on. I was contacted by a South African man about getting together and doing a lesson when he was in town. I agreed and went about looking through my stash for some less than great staves and shafting material for him to practice on. I decided to drop by the bow workshop of a local aboriginal man who is a friend of mine to get some better bamboo shafting material. We always chat for hours exchanging info and I always leave with free stuff. This time he told me he was uninterested in continuing to make wooden bows since all his clients were wanting bamboo ones now. He said I was welcome to his stash. He presented me with some wood from a more central area of Taiwan (Nantou) he said the aboriginals there used to make bows. He said his friend from there gave him several staves of this wood as a gift, but he never got around to making more than one bow out of it. He showed me the bow and it seemed to work fine, so I was immediately interested to try even though the wood was full of knots, small diameter and frankly didn't strike me as great bow wood. He gave me several staves, the largest was incredibly dense, while the smaller saplings were dubious as bow wood at best. Free wood is free wood though and I figured I could use them for the bow class I was teaching the following week. So, when we got around to using it for the class, it was all going well till it snapped about the last 2 inches of tillering in the exact spot I marked it might blow up at. I sent the guy home with one of the other staves to practice on and kept the denser one for myself to consider using at a later date. I kept scratching my head as to what it was so went about trying to ID. He called it "Dog Bone Wood". Seemed easy enough to search for and pulled up the tree right away. The bark is really obvious. Turns out, it is used for carvings because it is so dense that it looks like bone when carved and it quite expensive to buy the wood because of this. The larger piece I have had such a big check running down the majority of it, I just decided to partition it out into little blanks to show the grain. You can follow the link to see the latin name of it. Sorry there is no English available for it. Sometimes it is called "FalseCoffee". Thought you guys would certainly be interested in seeing it even though it is merely a white wood. http://kplant.biodiv.tw/狗骨仔/狗骨仔.htm...jsg4jI8bvBoEc0tYptxBtzOuQmicTKqSFOIj5FFxTZTnU

Reactions: Like 1 | Thank You! 1 | EyeCandy! 1 | Way Cool 5


----------



## Byron Barker (Mar 1, 2020)

@Mr. Peet @phinds . Ever seen this before?


----------



## phinds (Mar 1, 2020)

Not something I've ever even heard of before.

Reactions: Like 1


----------



## Mr. Peet (Mar 1, 2020)

Byron Barker said:


> @Mr. Peet @phinds . Ever seen this before?



I do not have any of this wood, nor have I heard of it. Reminds me some of boxwood (_Buxus_) and burning bush (_Euonymus alatus_) combined.

Reactions: Like 1


----------



## barry richardson (Mar 1, 2020)

Thats cool wood Byron, can you read Chinese? If so, you are my hero


----------



## Byron Barker (Mar 2, 2020)

barry richardson said:


> Thats cool wood Byron, can you read Chinese? If so, you are my hero


I went to school for it for a few years, but after teaching full time, I lost most of my ability really quickly. Not the kind of language you can just "pick up" by using it, so you need to invest about 2 hours a day to study. Don't have that right now.


----------



## Nature Man (Mar 2, 2020)

Those carvings look like Ivory! That wood is magical! Chuck

Reactions: Like 1


----------

