Here is a gorgeous Yellow Birch staff. The wet bark was stripped carefully with a pruning knife as to leave no tooling marks o it, except the root ends were truncated with a drawknife. It stands 71-1/2" tall and the shaft ranges in diameter from 1-1/2" to 2". The roots account for the top 10", and they barely fit in an 8" x 8" girth box. This has sharp nodes on the shaft where it was starting to branch out. Yellow birch is a dense hardwood, and this one was harvested and stripped on 6/18/24. As it dries it may open up a few splits to release tension, but that is normal. (ufws250)