Muscle Wood

The name Hornbeam derives from The German Horn Baum meaning Horn wood, because presumably it is hard as horn, I'm sure you'll find other derivations/definitions too. The American species is also known as muscle wood. This pic of one limb, which makes use of the low evening sun, shows why. The bark is almost smooth and you can see the rippling wood underneath a bit lke a muscley forearm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornbeam
I've thinned it a bit more and it's now flexing if I lean my body weight on it. I'll put up on the tiller soon, it will be a pig to get it flexing as, with that much reflex it will keep trying to flip over. I may have to make some sort of clamp arrangement untill the tips are pulling down below the grip and it becomes stable. A bow flipping over on the tiller can give you a nasty whack on the knuckles.

I shot at the club end of month 3D shoot today, went round in good company and we all shot quite well.
The girl who now has the Yew longbow seemed to be getting along nicely with it and her Mum said she was becoming very attached to it. I tried not to hover around offering advice as that's a sure way to put anyone off, but I just happened to see her on one target near the club house. A giant rubber Frog across a pond, her first shot was slightly rushed, her second looked nicely controlled and I heard the thud of a hit! Excellent.
When I'd been warming up at the start of the shoot I must have snatched at the draw as I felt a nasty stabbing pain under my right shoulder blade. Damn! I was tempted to quit and go home, but did a few stretches and moaned a bit (I knew I'd get more sympathy at the club than I would at home ;) ), then gave it another go, taking care to inhale and use my muscles more carefully and smoothly, no problem at all and by the time we'd shot a few I'd forgotten about it. I think the problem was, I'd got used to drawing 30# over the last few weeks and all of a sudden I was pulling 47#.