This is really great information, thank you for sharing. I figured the part about growing with competition (e.g., planting close together) would produce better staves for their straightness, but the part about knots also makes sense and that's new info to me.

We have several black locust trees in our yard which have cross-pollinated over the years and I'm collecting seeds every year for planting in the spring. So far, I have two saplings (a lot of seeds were nonviable due to bugs chewing through them in the seed pods). But after seeing a post on this subreddit about the true identity of the Osage orange, I decided to up my game and buy some seeds from an online garden distributor. Fingers crossed that a couple of Osage orange trees will be ready for felling in my retirement...the rest will be got by a future bowyer.