Mesquite curing trials

Decided I'm gonna try my hand at making some nattys. I cut 6 forks over the last few days. All mesquite. I'm doing some experimenting with the curing process. I'm gonna do some in the garage some in the house and a few in the car and weight them all daily to see how they dry.

My plan was to leave the bark on all of them. And let them dry slowly. Not gonna seal the ends and just see what happens.

I wasn't very careful when cutting one today and I skinned part of the fork. I'm debating whether to just peel all the bark off this one while it's green so at least it dries out evenly. Any thoughts? Anyone know if mesquite is prone to cracking? It's a nice symmetrical fork so I'd like to keep it intact if I can.



My plan is to make a chart showing the drying rates for the different locations along with the temperatures and I'll post that here some time in the future.