another YEW Motherload!

[330bull]

Hello,

All I can say is you never know what you'll stumble upon.  An acquaintance of mine saw a posting on the bowsite about a yew longbow I made.  He sent me a PM stating "Hey, I'm going to saw up some yew trees this weekend for firewood, do you want them?..."  Talk about a no brainer!   

When I got there to cut up what I thought was one tree, he actually had three to cut up; two more than what he thought!  A lot of branches, some amount of rot, but I think it will make some great lumber for laminations for laminated yew selfbows.  And I mean A LOT of lumber!

Pic #1:  All of the sections I could handle myself and stack against my 6' fence.

Pic #2:  Two huge 300# logs I could not even attempt to remove from my truck alone.  These are the most promising for some cool character staves.

Pic #3:  A picture of  30' tall tree @ 20" diameter that Michael wants me to cut down this spring.  This tree is almost flawless for 12-14 feet, but I think it may have some twist. 

Can you believe that?!?!?  He was going to burn them for firewood.

I plan in heading down to John Strunk's next Monday to get his assistance in judging the wood, as well as do some horse trading. I'm really hoping John could make some great us of this wood and I'll obviously just give him a good share of it.  I'll post some pictures from that trip.

Later, Joe

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[duffontap]

Good grief!  You're a lucky man.

        J. D.

[duffontap]

Now that I think about it--if your big tree has some twist, you may want to consider having a 6' section milled into boards.  A stack of nice Yew boards for Hickory and Bamboo-backed bows would be priceless.  I think I'm going to hit a couple of my twisted logs with a chainsaw mill so I can get more bows out of them without the hassle of steam correcting, and the heartbreak of fruitless efforts.

            J. D.

[Badger]

   What eleveation was this harvested at? Steve

[mitchman]

i could tell in that picture that you wanted to send mitchman some of that awesome wood.

[joewaco78]

Wow congrats! That is an amazing haul!

[330bull]

Hi Steve,

Harvested @ ~500 feet but I know of plenty of bows that have been built with low land yew.  However I don't have enough experience to know the real performance difference between different elevations.

JD - I'm already assuming that I'll be lucky to get 6 staves out of the load, and the rest will be milled for boards for boo/yew laminated bows. I'll post the final pics once I visit John.

Joe

[duffontap]

Harvested @ ~500 feet but I know of plenty of bows that have been built with low land yew.  However I don't have enough experience to know the real performance difference between different elevations.

You never know until you try it.  It should make great backed bows regardless.  Don't be afraid to burn the bad stuff for heat.  Bad bow wood is just that--regardless of the species. 

      J. D.

[radius]

good haul, man!

whereabouts you parked?

[kayakfisher]

Man go buy a lottery ticket, lucky
                                           Dennis

[330bull]

Hah!  All of that load was either firewood or TBD once it dries.