Warbow Stave

The heavy bow fraternity up the club has been growing in numbers and I've tested the dogleg Yew longbow back at a full 32" draw as it might suit one of the guys.
The draw weight was a little down on what I expected, its 70# at 32" but it is smooth and fast.
70# at 32" has a lot more energy in the bow than 70# at 28"

It's quite deceptive, about 7" of draw length is lost as brace height* so you are really comparing 25" 'power stroke' with 21" , well that's 19% more!
I tested it through the chrono' with a heavy arrow (568grains) and my 'standard' arrow (414grains) and got 171 and 181 fps respectively which is pretty quick. I'm hoping to test it at the club tomorrow, I'll also maybe test a flight arrow in a lighter bow.

The Yew I cut last November http://bowyersdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/applying-to-cut-yew-and-general-progress.html is destined to become a 120# Warbow... (I hope... I don't want to count my chickens before they have hatched).
I took the half log down from the shelves and looked it over, it looks very good, pretty straight and knot free, Rather coarse grained, but I'm not over worried by that. I marked it out with chalk, very much oversize.
I ran it through the bandsaw to reduce it a little which will help the next 5 months of seasoning. It's now about 2.5" square and 82" long. I tested the moisture content of the offcut and it 16%.
I don't worry too much about moisture content but it's good to know that it is drying out..
the sapwood is fairy thin so I may try my trick of tillering it with the cambium layer left on to maintain a pristine layer of sapwood for the back.

* Brace height is measured from the belly so a 6" brace is about  7" when measured from the back the way drawlength is measured.