Gathering Poles and Saplings

What to cut

Rustic furniture uses three kinds of stock, and each wants different wood.

The Adirondack makers prized yellow birch for frames, white cedar for its light weight and rot resistance, and white birch bark for panels ¹. The 1907 manual Rustic Carpentry used hazel, cherry, yew, birch, larch, fir, and the prunings of many shrubs ². Willow is the easiest bending stock: it bends easily, holds its bend, and usually keeps its bark as it dries ³.

Diamond willow is a special case. Some shrub willows, including Bebb’s willow (Salix bebbiana), common in wet meadows, swamps, and lakeshores across Minnesota and Wisconsin, grow diamond-shaped scars on the trunk that show red and white when the stem is peeled and carved. It’s made into canes, lamp posts, and furniture ⁴.

Winter for bark, spring for peeling

The cutting season decides whether the bark stays on. Rustic Carpentry is direct about it ²:

• For bark-on work, cut in mid-winter, when the sap is at rest. Sticks cut in summer lose their bark.
• For peeled work, cut in spring, when the sap is rising, and the bark comes off easily.

The reason is the cambium, the thin growing layer between bark and wood. In spring it’s soft and wet, and the bark slips off. In winter it’s dormant and the bark is locked on. Hickory inner bark for seats is peeled in that spring window, May to early June ⁵. Basket willow, by contrast, is cut dormant, November through March ⁶.

Peeling

Spring-cut poles can often be peeled by hand or with a dull blade once a cut is started. Later in the year use a drawknife: bevel down, pulled toward you in long strokes along the grain, the pole held in a shaving horse or on sawhorses. For a mottled, half-rustic surface, take off only the outer bark and leave patches of inner bark, the treatment the Park Service liked on cedar.

Seasoning

Rustic Carpentry stored sticks for six to twelve months, according to size, then brushed them clean before use ². Dry sticks shrink less after assembly, hold nails better, and grow less mold under the bark. Stack them off the ground, out of sun and rain, with air around them.

Bent willow is the exception. It loses its flexibility as it dries, so cut it and build soon after ³. Keep cut willow shaded and the butt ends in water if you can’t use it the same week.

The usual compromise for chairs: season the straight frame stock, cut the bending stock fresh, and make the joints so that drying pulls them tighter (see Round Tenons and Shrink Fits).

Getting stock

• Ask first. On private land, ask the owner; on public land, check the rules before cutting anything. Many places allow no cutting at all.
• Cut where it helps. Saplings crowding a fence line, willow along a ditch, ironwood in an overstocked woodlot, and storm-damaged trees are good sources.
• Willow coppices. Cut willow and dogwood regrow from the stump, often several shoots for each one cut.
• Cut more than you need. Sort it into frame, bend, and twig piles the same day, and label species and cutting date.

Try it

This winter, cut a bundle of straight 1- to 1-1/2-in. poles for frame stock (hickory, ironwood, or white oak) and tag each with the date. Next May, cut a few more of the same species and try to peel both. Write down how the bark behaved.

What to take from this

Use strong, straight hardwoods or cedar for frames, willow and dogwood for bends, and contrasting barks for decoration; Bebb’s willow gives diamond willow. Cut in mid-winter when the bark must stay on, and in spring when you want it to peel. Peel with a drawknife along the grain. Season frame sticks six to twelve months, but bend willow green. Get permission, and cut where thinning helps.