Roughing Out Yew Stave

The stave was cut from the Gibberd garden late last October (I made them a wooden donations box in exchange for it). It was split in two and some of the side wood chopped off.
The dark pithy centre of the stave shows a nice wiggle, which will be retained in the final bow.


Normally I'd rough it out further using an axe. I've had pretty bad tennis elbow recently and I've bought a bandsaw off E-bay, so I've used that to take the stave down a bit further for the next 4 months of seasoning.
It takes a bit of care to use a bandsaw without taking off too much, while trying to follow the curves of the wood. The pic with my longbow gives an idea of how much timber is still left and also the natural reflex of the stave. The log was originally straight, the reflex is just the tension in the wood, this usually happens when a log is split and most of this will probably come out as the bow is tillered. The bow on the left was roughly straight as a log, and has taken a little set through use.



The heartwood/sapwood boundary isn't very well defined, but it will probably become clearer as the wood ages and is finished.
The next step is to remove the bark, there is a nice line of small pin knots on one limb, these could become a very pretty feature along with the wiggle.