The next stave is a lot shorter than the last, it's only about 70" long, it's from the same batch of Yew and I've discovered another on of those horrid blind knots.I've been carefully laying out the bow and reducing the dimensions using the bandsaw with a relatively fine blade.
I've got to the point where I think the knot will effectively fall off the side of the bow as I work it down, leaving a nice ghostly swirl of grain on the side of the bow.
the sap wood is pretty thick so will need reducing. The pic shows how you can't always just simply follow a growth ring as the boundary between heart and sap doesn't always follow a ring. hopefully you can see how the heart wood swells up into the sap wood on the right side of the pic, cutting across the rings.
I expect this will produce a bow of 50# or so.
I'm expecting to make about 6 Yew longbows this year if I can get them out of timber I have.
In theory, the next one I should be making is for a guy with a 30" draw! I don't think I'll try to get that one out of this short stave. To get back to 30" reliably at a decent draw weight I think I'll be looking for at leat 73", maybe I'll get several staves roughed out to this stage and see what I can make of 'em. No point trying to get the wrong bow from the wrong stave.
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