Starting Another

I was lacking inspiration, I have a few primitive Yew bows to make, but the suitable staves aren't seasoned. A couple of people are after Bamboo backed Yew bows too, but I don't have suitable Yew heartwood.
Just as I'm wondering what to pick up, and I sweeping the garage after sawing Yew logs, I get a nudge from my mate JT who tipped me the wink that Ruth who goes to the ILAA shoots was hoping to get on my Yew longbow list. Well it just so happens that when I was sorting out staves for the last one I did , there was one that might do, it was a tad skinny for a 60# but it might do for this one (50# @ 30") This is a bit of a guess as Ruth normally uses a target style draw, but wants to get beyond 200 yards which is bit of a stretch for 40# at 27". so if we up the poundage and go for a more rustic/medieval draw maybe we'll get her there. The other thing is, it's easy to reduce the weight if it's too much but it's tricky to bring it up. I'd estimate 50# @ 30" equates to about 45# @27" which seems pretty reasonable.
I joked to JT that I'd make it 95# and simply write 40# on it ;-)

The skinny stave had a real rough area of damaged bark at the grip, and as I cleaned it up I could see it went deep with several areas of manky stuff into some of the rings beneath the bark. My guess is that a crossing branch had been rubbing against it periodically and caused damage wich had grown over and then the same had happened repeatedly. I rasped out down to sound wood so that I could patch it. Just in case this doesn't turn out well, I had another hunt through my staves and billets and found a pair of book matched billets that are pretty good, but not meaty enough for a warbow. So I've sawn the splices into those and got them ready to glue. that way I can get both lots of gluing done at once with less waste and mess.

Just need to be patient now and wait overnight for it to cure.

The bow has been back and forth on the tiller and is coming along nicely, here's some video:-
https://youtu.be/IIFYn6u3jvA
Since taking the video I've eased off the left (lower limb) and taken about an inch of each tip, these have been narrowed and worked down a tad.
The bow has a bit of set, but once it's nearly tillered I'll do a little light heat treating and straighten or recurve the tips a little.