okay...lots of misconceptions on this thread (no offense). board bows are by far the easiest way to build a bow if you know what you are looking for. grain must run all the way through the board. no (or very few once you have experience) steps in the grain is a critical part of a board stave. Seasoned tree cut staves are easier for most beginners to start with because it's easy to follow the grain. Simply remove the bark and you have your bow back. Knots require a lot of patience. make the bow wider in proportion to account for knots. If you have only removed the bark then natural reinforcement by the tree around knots will suffice. Still make the bow wider though. I recommend you order a floor tillered hickory stave from rudderbows archery. It's a good way to get started with a straight knot free peice of wood. If you break it, consider what you paid for the stave (not too expensive anyway) cost of many lessons learned and move on to another one. I recommend highly all the books in the Traditional Bowyer's Bible series. Volume 2 will have what you need to know about board bows.  Volume 4 has all the most recent developments on design and performance and so much more. There are ways to "quick cure" tree cut staves. The less wood there is there to cure, the faster it will cure. if you take a green stave fresh cut from a tree, and work it down  closer to finished size it can cure in only a few weeks. That exact process is in volume 2 (tbb), and is it again discussed in volume 4. Basically volume 4 takes a lot of the stuff in volumes 1-3 and says, "we figured out this is sometimes true, and this is why." Vol 4 also has some awesome methods for heat treating bows. The results of doing this properly are astounding. This makes for the fastest shooting, most durable solid wood self bows possible. Good luck, have fun, and take it with a stride because you gotta learn from mistakes to  make good wood bows. Hope this helps.