Gdenby,
I have stripped Siberian Elm and Schubert Chokecherry the same way. The strips come off in long peels that just go up the stick in long, wonderful pieces that only break when they hit a side branch. It is wonderful to watch a strip actually go up a side branch, and strip it , too! It is incredibly wet underneath the stripped bark.
However, there are three layers to bark. Outer, Middle, and Inner. What I've found, is that the Outer and Middle layers will strip this way, leaving the Inner bark, which is the major mover of water in the tree. This Inner layer is also what turns into the next ring, and turns to wood to mark the growth of that year in the trees history. The Inner bark won't strip, it has to be scraped off. Most trees it appears as a slight greenish white, soft(compared to the real wood underneath), and very wet(as it stores water with a "tree anti-freeze" for winter)layer that looks like you are done stripping bark.
I start dragging a knife backwards (scraping)with a good amount of pressure, and this Inner bark will start peeling away from the true wood of last years growth. Most Trees, the last years growth shows as a bright white, hard wood. It takes a while to scrape a walking stick length piece of its Inner Bark, and as the Inner Bark dries( because the middle and outer bark are gone, it de-hydrates) will turn yellow/brown. Scrape until the entire stick is down to last years wood, and it should be fine, as that wood is dry.
I harvested both elm and chokecherry at the end of this winter, stripped and scraped one branch of each, just to see what the wood was like. My stripped and scraped sticks have been just fine, no cracking, very minor checking. My bark on sticks, coated with parrifin wax at the cuts, are major checking and cracking as they go through the drying season, even in the first 6 months of a 2 year dry time.
I did harvest a bit of Blackthorne deadwood, and assumed it was dry, as it was dead. This is too small to be a cane, so I tried making a club, about 13" long. It was 3/4 dead core(spalted,grey/black, with to the core cracks already in it) with only about a quarter of the branch with bark on it, in the thinner outer branch/shank regions. The base area where the hand hold is, was fully barked. Traditionally, blackthorne is left bark on, so I left the rest of the bark on. Assuming it was dry/dead, I shaped the handhold area as a traditional shilleleaugh. Three days later it started splitting and cracking open. Evidently, even deadwood is too wet to process immediately! Threw it into my curing solution of detergent, water, and alchohol for a week. It stopped the cracking/splitting, but I had to recut the whole stick to get the cracks out of the hand hold area.
You just never know about found, natural woods, though I'm learning quickly!
