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?
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.
It's deep purple-red with wide rings and frequent knots like some ERC. Dunno if that helps.
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.
Incense cedar(Calocedrus decurrens) is related to cypress. It may work for sinew backed bow but would probably be iffy for a selfbow.
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.
My guess is that what Ed has is ERC. A pic would let us know for sure.