Pair of Yew Staves

 The last bow I made came out under weight (72# instead of 80#) due purely to impatience when trying to reduce it from 85#. The customer likes the bow, but would like me to make anothre as well, ironically he wants 85# ! (if only he'd said that in the first place).
Anyhow, I was sorting through my staves and found a couple of marginal ones probably better suited to 60 pounders. I looked further and found two gorgeous half logs of English Yew, on closer inspection I saw they were the from the same log, which was about 3 1/2" diameter when I sawed it in August 2019. I roughed them down a bit to about 2" x 2" square to better see any problems. The better one is real warbow material, the other has some knots which will either fall off the side of the stave as it is worked down or will be filled or avoided.

However there is one big knot on the side of the bow at the grip.
Knots on the side aren't too much of a worry, especially when the sapwood is sound on the back and the actual belly is solid. They need filling though, else they could be a weak point and simply collapse. I was careful to excavate any loose, unsound material in the knot, which left just a rounded end of solid wood. I packed epoxy mixed withYew sawdust all around that end and filled the cavity. The filled knot is shown, not the prettiest feature, but it should do the job. I've filled bigger cavities than that on 90# bows with no problem. The are some other knots and one that goes through the sapwood, it's about 4mm diameter, and is about 10" from one end. I can leave a little extra width there to ensur ethat there is plenty of sapwood to take the tension.