unfortunately these branches are all heart wood except for one layer of soft wood on them, even though they over and inch thick for the most part there is a lot of knots in the wood. They were on the way to a land fill so I rescued them, yew is hard to come by in eastern Ontario. I'm still quite new to this hobby so I thought to take a chance grabbing the branches figuring I might be able to figure a use for them.
Unfortunately?
There's no 'unfortunately' about it!
That sounds perfect to me!
Just take the bark off very carefully... ( or, come to think of it, leave the darned stuff on, if it wants to come off it will do in it's own sweet time, meanwhile it is protecting the more delicate sapwood).
Leave any branches or knots sticking up by 1/8", leave the back alone.
Just chop away the belly until you have a nice stickbow.
It's rare (or it is in the UK) to find Yew with nice thin sapwood.
It only needs 1/8" of sapwood to do the job.
Even if the wood is knotty, Yew is pretty forgiving, don't beat youself up if it breaks, just have a go and you will learn a lot.
Del
(Check out my website, just google 'Delsbows' also have a look at my 'bowyers diary' (google that too) where I blog my bow making, including the failures, I'm currently working on a Yew primitive)
