Glue Up

I've glued up the Oregon Yew Heartwood and English Yew sapwood. It's quite a tough job binding it up with two layers of rubber strapping. Once strapped up, I clamped the middle to a length of dexion steel angle and put a wooden block under each tips forcing it into a slight reflex. Ideally I'd probably clamp it to a former, but that would be tricky with the rubber binding, and I'd have to make the long former.
Because the stave has already been shaped to a reasonably even taper it should take on a smooth curve just by lifting the tips, in an equal and opposite way to how it will form a nice curve when drawn in use.
I expect some of this reflex will spring out when it's unstrapped and some will pull out during tillering. I'm hoping to end up with a nice straight back to the bow when it's finished.
The glue is Resintite which is in powder form, is mixed with water into a fairly thick liquid, I take care to weigh the powder and liquid as per the manufacturers instructions. I use Highland spring water to mix it with as it's purer than our tap water I don't know if it's important, but I happen to have some, so why risk our hard Essex tap water?
The manufacturer says only apply the glue to one surface, but I ignore that as I want to be sure that both surfaces have been thoroughly wetted and that there is enough glue to squeeze a little out as it's bound up (see pic, you can also see the bark is still on.)
The surfaces were prepared by rasping along their length with the rasp held sideways to score the surface along the length rather than actually rasping away any wood.



I've also been cleaning up the bonkers bow, plugging another knot and adding a small patch to one edge where there was a dark stain which turned out to be a buried knot.
I'll blog up the finished bow with all it's patches and fixes when I've finished it. I'll probably put it on my website as an example of the sort of abuse Yew can survive.