A couple of truisms I got from a bowyer's site. As far as bows are concerned, they are truths, but for general woodworking, particualryly flat work, there may be some additional considerations...
1 - Wood dries from the outside in. If you are going to shape the wood smaller, do it while wet. Otherwise you are just waiting for waste wood to dry.
2 - The larger a piece of stock is, the more likely it is to twist/check/crack while drying.
What a lot of boyers do is split logs into staves, use a hatchet or drawknife to roughly shape a bow, slather end grain with glue (TB-II or TB-III), lightly glue coat or shellac tangential grain and then sit it aside to dry lightly clamped to a board. It dries faster, straighter and with less failures.
For flat work, I guess the shrinkage would be an issue and you could not cut to final dimensions in step 1.
1 - Wood dries from the outside in. If you are going to shape the wood smaller, do it while wet. Otherwise you are just waiting for waste wood to dry.
2 - The larger a piece of stock is, the more likely it is to twist/check/crack while drying.
What a lot of boyers do is split logs into staves, use a hatchet or drawknife to roughly shape a bow, slather end grain with glue (TB-II or TB-III), lightly glue coat or shellac tangential grain and then sit it aside to dry lightly clamped to a board. It dries faster, straighter and with less failures.
For flat work, I guess the shrinkage would be an issue and you could not cut to final dimensions in step 1.
