Yew "fence post" longbow, part 8 - filling time

Reducing and heat treating the belly has revealed the weakness inherent in the knot in the upper limb. The knot was pretty punky, and adding heat to it only made it crumble worse. While I've compensated for it some (probably not enough?!) by adjusting the width of the limb at that point, it makes me highly uncomfortable having this open "wound," if you will. As I started digging out the punky parts, the knot has revealed itself to be somewhat conical in nature, with the tip of the cone just protruding in a flattened point on the back of the stave, though it was not punky fully though. This results in the blister in the back being somewhat filled -- more crater like than an actual tunnel.

I've decided to try and fill this with a combination of yew wood dust (collected in the dust collector by grinding some yew offcuts on the belt sander) and super thin cyanoacrylate (CA) glue (a.k.a. "super glue"). What I've read on-line is that the wood dust should be reasonably fine and that it should be compacted in small layers, then soaked through with the CA glue.  Doing this on the back is pretty straightforward. It will also be covered by rawhide, so I'm mostly trying to fill the little crater here so that I don't end up with an air pocket after the rawhide goes on.

Filled and glued.

Leveled and sanded smooth.

The hole on the belly side takes considerably longer. I add just a bit of wood dust, then compact it down with the stem of a q-tip that has had its head removed. Glue is dribbled in a bit at a time to soak through, after which I pack down the wood dust again and use a paper towel to wick up any puddling glue before it dries. The whole process gets repeated again.

Partly filled...

...fully filled...

...being filed...

...and finished!

With luck, the filling process will provide some sort of structural support -- but I'm not going to count on it. I am learning that with bows, as each new problem reveals itself, although we may take measures to remedy it, we are constantly flirting with disaster. I feel like Odysseus, trying to navigate between Scylla on one side and Charybdis on the other. Let's hope things turn out better for this bow than for Odysseus's men...