More Bandsaw Work & Arrow Plate

Blimey I'm tired out!
Yesterday afternoon Alexi, the guy who'd put me on to the tree surgeon about the Newmarket Yew came over to help me run the longer pieces through the bandsaw. He brought a piece of his own Yew to saw too, it had been seasoning for about 3 years and was superb, a lovely colour and tight grained. We joked that it was obviously the finest quality high altitude Italian Yew despite being cut in Essex !
Some of the logs were a bit too much for the bandsaw, but with two of us carefully feeling it through we did a good job.
I had been hoping to give Alexi some of my wood, but he doesn't have a workshop of his own.
That quirk of life that when you are young and have the energy you don't have the time and facilities. Then when you are older you have the time and facilities, but have lost some of the vigour and your hair!
Anyhow I wrote his name and date on his Yew and I'll find room for it somewhere. We had a try out of some of my bows too and now he knows where I am he's welcome to use the facilities.
While shooting the Hazel recurve I noticed the tip misalignment had reappeared and the string was kicking out of one of the string grooves. I can sort that out sometime, maybe with dry heat this time. For the moment I've got too much on. Maybe storing it standing vertically resting on one tip didn't help, maybe it was the step through stringing (it's a pig to string) who know? Anyhow, that'll wait for another day.

This afternoon, I sawed out the last of the billets and cut up all the scrap stuff for firewood and stacked it outside. (that's not even all of it in the pic!) The size of the pile gives you an idea of how much timber I've handled (and most of it has been picked up 4 times at least!).

The final haul is 10 long stave (not all long enough for longbows) and 20 billets. Some of it will be challenging and interesting to work, but even a pessimistic estimate of my success rate would give at least 10 bows.
A very worth while haul, but a heck of a lot of work... yeah, remind me again 'how long does it take to make a bow?' :)

Time for a breather, then sweep out the garage and get on inlaying a Mother of Pearl arrow plate into the dogleg longbow. I should have it ready for next weekend, as I know there's a man itching to get his hands on it.

As you can see I've done the arrow plate... the pic is a bit yellow due to the artificial light in the garage.
Nice clean job., you can see the lovely thin sapwood and untouched back.