Visitor with Yew Logs!

My mate Rob came over yesterday with a nice load of Yew, all nice and straight about 4-5" diameter. Nearly all of 'em had at least one good stave and some had two clean faces, a couple of them just gave a billet.
We spent a few hours working on a stave he'd been working on and roughing out a smallish half log he'd been given. The stave he'd been working had a knot right through the back near the tip... it was a bit iffy, so I went through the process of rasping it down and doing a patch on the back. It's one of those jobs that is basically fairly simple but it needs a lot of fiddling and fettling to get the patch to match up reasonably and to be thin enough to flex so that you get a good glue line. It's a job that unless you've seen it done is a bit daunting. We had a good natter about why bows explode etc and wolfed down egg and beans on toast and copious tea. A good day on all counts, I also gave him a couple of smallish seasoned staves that he can have a go with for say 40-50 pounders with less risk of them exploding. I feel I could do with making a nice safe 45# ELB myself as I don't actually have a longbow of that weight...
The only ELBs I have are a 70# @ 28" self Yew an 80# @ 32" Hickory backed Yew and a 50# Boo backed Yew flight bow ... so no real choice ;-)

I spent most of today, running the Yew through the bandsaw and painting the ends with PVA. The final count was 10 staves and 4 billets. I took all the off cuts to the council tip, along with some garden rubbish and swept out the garage. Daft thing is, I'd taken some off-cuts of green Yew to the tip the other day and asked if it was "Timber" or "Garden Waste" .... I was told garden waste. So this time I went to chuck it in the garden waste and the bloke says "that's timber"... I told him the bloke the other day said it was green waste and explained it was green not seasoned ... I think I lost him, but he let me chuck it in the skip. I don't really care which it is, just wish they knew the difference... which presumably is whether it is seasoned? (Answers on a postcard...)

Anyhow, I've got a decent stash ready for winter 2020 :-)