pacific yew hunting

[yew hunter]

I have a question....how do you straighten an 80+ inch yew wood stave? I am interested in finding, and making yew staves on the mid coast of british columbia. even the straightest yew i have found have some twist to some degree, do you start making a bow before you straighten it, or do you straighten the stave first? the staves on the internet for sale i've seen seem impossibly straight and makes me wonder if they have been straightened for the purpose of selling, some even have notch marks left on them where you would hold it in a jig.

[Del the cat]

Leave the problem to the bowyer...
Del

[adb]

Most of the yew staves you see on the internet for sale are cut both sides, or one side. That's why they're so "straight."

As far as heat correcting goes, a stave is too big. Heat correction (if necessary) happens well into the tillering process. 

[yew hunter]

thanks for the reply. I have been studying the yew long bow stave for 8 months now, the reason being is the value. I work in the logging industry on northern vancouver island and yew is considered by the large logging companies and ministry of forests as "waste" or "byproduct" and is just burned in large slash piles because it has no merchantable value. It does however seem to have a high value to bow makers and specialist wood workers. 

[yew hunter]

for years i have been burning yew to heat the house and do minor wood working projects, and sell a little on the side for yew lumber. 8 months ago someone told me that people use yew to build bows and ive been chasing yew staves ever since. The prices that people pay for pristine yew staves seems unbelievable, the problem i have is that i have no idea how to build a bow and i have more straight 80+ inch yew than i know what to do with. I have hand split 40 to 50 yew staves but out of all those staves only 4 or 5 look like the ones for sale on the net, yet they all have clean faces and "appeared" to be straight grain once you hand split the invisible twist shows its self some worse than others. Are twisted staves firewood or can they be straightened? It becomes evident when you hand split how you would "violate" the grain structure when using a band saw because it would be impossible to see that twist while sawing.From studying the net and the bowyers bible steam is used to straighten the grain, I was just wondering if you could straighten the grain in stave form then clean it up with a band saw to reduce wieght for shipping. 

[mullet]

Unless they are crazy twisted you can straighten them like Adam said. You can also make some fine, laminated yew boys if you quarter saw the twisted ones into boards. I'd be interested in some small boards.

[Del the cat]

IMO anything less than 45 degrees twist over the length of the stave does matter in the slightest.
Del
BTW. Feel free to ship me samples for appraisal 

[wizardgoat]

Hey. People who hunt yew just to make money off bowyers and know nothing about it is pretty weak.
The same kind of guys who cut every single yew tree in site without knowing which ones will make a bow. I know you work in the logging industry and a disgusting amount of yew is wasted on burn piles and I also know certain people also charge ludicrous amounts of money for yew staves.  To me both these situations are lame.
Non bowyers who come here looking for advice on how to make money off bowyers doesn't sit well with me. I apologize if I'm reading into this too much.
If your looking for an "unbelievable"  pay check from "pristine" yew, you better know what your selling and how to handle it properly

[Aaron H]

I would suggest that you build a handful of bows.  Get an idea of what it takes, and what type of wood you want to look for.  Then you can start identifying good quality yew and differentiating between it and the stuff that goes into the burn pile.  What you want to do with the wood after you get some knowledge is up to you.  I know I would l like to see the prices of yew staves go down as well as the quality of the staves increasing.

[yew hunter]

    Thanks for the reply wizardgoat and falcon. I didn't intend to come across as lame, I was basically trying to find the best way to prepare a yew stave for sale and use. I have read the bowyers bible, the traditional bowyers encyclopedia, the best book i have though is Teaching the bow to bend, it is much better with the instruction, but none seem to address the problem of twist in a yew log which is why i tried this forum. I do wonder if the reason yew staves are so expensive is due to the experience required to make the stave and then add in the lack of access to yew, it would be hard to buy/sell. I am not looking to make a huge pay cheque by selling expensive walking sticks to bowyers, I do however have access to a resource of yew that nobody seems to want to deal with and would rather just burn it in slash piles than try to do something with it. All my yew comes from salvage in the area where i live/work. I am also working on a bow from some of already straight/clear yew - it is not easy. As for my twisted yew i'll just keep working on the problem.   

[E. Jensen]

Depends how its twisted.  Spiral grain, like a propeller, is undesirable but manageable.  Snakey staves are less popular, but highly valued by some, myself included.

[DC]

As Yew Hunter lives up Island from me I invited him down to look at my bows and maybe give him some hints(as much as I can) as to what to look for when he's hunting yew.  He had a bunch of yew in his truck that I would have killed for. I got two staves and a chunk from him. I think(with luck) there are 4, maybe 5 bows in the staves and maybe another two in the chunk. The chunk is twisted about 45 degrees in it's length but I think I can deal with it. There should be a bunch of heartwood that I can cut into lams. I'm pretty pleased. He was being way to critical of his wood. What he thought was waste or marginal was primo wood. At least to my eyes. A good source.

[E. Jensen]

I'm jealous

[Del the cat]

I do like a happy ending 
Del

[Badger]

  I respect what you are trying to do. I see nothing wrong with looking for sources of income. I am always looking for good sources for yew and it does sound like you are trying to educate yourself on what we use.