Vicarious Woodworking: Yew "fence post" longbow, part 1

Jarrod must have gotten busy cleaning out his garage this summer, as the third stave I inherited from him was a 60" yew wood stave, complete with broadheads in it. I got it from his wife when I went to go pick up my son from a play date at their house. She came out of the front door with this thing cradled in her arms saying, "He tried to explain, but I couldn't quite follow. He said you'd understand...."

As I got the full story from him later, he and his buddy were shooting one day in his buddy's yard several years ago, testing broadheads by shooting at fence posts. His buddy went first, and Jarrod tried to match his shot -- only when they went to retrieve their arrows, it turns out that it wasn't a fence post at all but a yew wood stave his friend had propped up in the yard. After some cursing, his friend decided to give it to him; and after storing it for years, Jarrod had decided he was never going to get around to it.

So that's the way I got it: 60 inches of yew (only 40+ inches of it usable) from a quarter log of about 4-5 inches in diameter with two broadheads in it and some wood rot where the thing had been touching the ground as it stood in the yard. In addition, there was tape and what appeared to be a fairly old shipping label still attached.

Broadheads!

Broadhead coming through the other side. Split runs deeply.

Two things were for sure: Those broadheads were still sharp, and there was no going to be getting them out. If the wood would be usable at all, the section with the broadheads (and the surrounding splits) would have to be cut off. In addition, the section with rot going through would have to be trimmed some in the hope that the rest could be worked around. But on a positive note, the wood was really well seasoned at this point, having lived in a warm, dry garage for a number of years.

Original Tim Baker mailing label.

The first thing I decided to do (before removing the broadhead section) was to give it a really good look over. I started to remove the tape and labels only to discover that the address on the label was to one Tim Baker of Oakland, California. I can only assume that it was the Tim Baker of Traditional Bowyer's Bible fame. How funny that I should now be working on a piece of wood given to me by my friend who got it as a reject from his friend who, I can only assume, inherited it as a reject from Tim! Given the short length, narrow diameter (hence higher crown), and the low ring count, I could begin to see why this particular piece of yew did not seem to be anybody's favorite. However, I determined to make a bow out of it one way or another, and decided that there might just be enough wood in there to resaw it into two 40" billets and then splice them back together in order to make an English style longbow.

Once the tape was removed and the broadhead section removed (including a safe margin of wood just south of where it had split from the impact), it appeared that I could safely remove 4" of the rotted end and still end up with 40" of viable wood. You can see some of the rot damage from the end.

End rot, extending at least 6 inches.

An inspection of the log showed a couple of knots that would have to be dealt with -- a smaller one that can be seen from the heartwood but not from the sapwood side, and a larger one that appears to emerge through the sapwood. Fortunately, the quarter log was split and not sawn out from the larger piece, showing by the undulation in the side where the knots were travelling to.

Smaller knot, visible only from heartwood.

Larger knot, visible from heartwood.

Larger knot protruding through sapwood.

The sapwood is an altogether different bit of business. It is gouged in several places (probably from shipping, standing around in the yard, and banging around in trucks and garages) and it appears discolored (and possibly slightly rotten?) under any of the taped areas, presumably where moisture crept in or simply couldn't find its way out. After a lot of contemplating, even though I would like for it to be a selfbow, I decided that it would be best if it got backed with rawhide.