Yew "fence post" longbow, part 2 - laying out

After cutting off 4-inch section of rotted wood, it was still possible to see some rot penetrating into the stave. It looks, however, as if most of this will come off in the initial shaping and subsequent tillering, as it is fairly far from the sapwood. It also means that this section will have to be one of the outer tips if I am going to split and splice the stave back together -- which is a bit of a shame, since that end of the unsplit stave is slightly wider and would leave me more room for error in creating the splice at the handle.

Rotted end, before removal.

Remaining rot. How deep does it go?

Width of good end.

Width of rotted end. 

In these two images, one is able to compare the width of the two ends. The good end is almost a half inch narrower than the rotted end, which does not leave much room for error if I'm going to rip this into two sections to be spliced back together. Even though that makes me slightly uncomfortable, I'm going to do it anyway. How else will I learn something?

You can see from the photo at left what the ring count looks like. I mentioned in my last post that it was fairly low. Here I count between about 10-12 rings per inch. The wood, however, feels pretty heavy compared to other yew I've handled. It's kind of hard to tell from the photos, but the heartwood is very tan -- almost with a gray-green in some spots as opposed to the very reddish or orangeish yew I am used to working.

Since the wood has a lower ring count, and because the stave has pretty much no reflex (one part is slightly deflexed?), I'm planning to give the stave some heat treatment (probably after it is spliced and roughed out but before floor tillering), at which point I can induced a little relfex.

One complication is the fact that the stave, as it stands right now, jogs a little to one side at about 20 inches. In addition, there is a slight amount of propeller twist. It looks like I won't be able to lay this out with a straight cutting line along the back. Instead, I've decide to cut it straight until the stave starts to show the job and twist, at which point I'll change my cut so that it stays down the middle. (I could split this, but I worry about the lack of wiggle room. Even doing this on the bandsaw will only give me just the slightest amount of room for goofing up at the handle end. I figure I need to end with 1.25" at least to make this work.) You can just make out the jog and twist in the photos below.

Jog and twist.

Jog and twist.

One advantage to splitting the stave is that some of the bigger gouges in the sapwood are going to end up falling to one side or the other of the new thinner splits, and will eventually be worked off the entire limb as the front profile is brought in. You can see one such example in the circled section in the photo below. I think part of good bowerie is simply taking the time to really think through what the wood has to offer and how can can intelligently work around problems. An additional set of problems surrounds the two knots I identified in the last post. After splitting this stave, both should fall squarely within the middle of one of the limbs; the other limb will be knot free. I'll plan to make the knotty (naughty?) limb the upper one, since it should be slightly weaker and under a little less strain, anyhow.