Hei,
Last summer I got a couple of yew staves grown here in Finland. They were too knotty for selfbows so I decided to try backed bows from them. I took the bark away, flattened the back side by bandsaw and allowed them to dry in my cellar. In the beginning of November I glued 5 mm ipe slice as core and bamboo back with Unibond800 on the shorter one and bamboo only on the longer one.
I started with the shorter stave (the longer one is still waiting for it´s turn), shaped it and started tillering with long string. Everything fine until I tried to switch to shorter string and I thumbled with my stringer succeeding to crack off ca. 10 cm from the lower limb. Some Finnish swearing and then I decided to reshape the remaining stave and continued tillering w/o too high expectations. Now the tillering proceeded fine and the little stick refused to break at 28" even though it was only some 62" long. I was very amazed and pleased the same time about the ability of yew to stand the compression pressure under bamboo.
After raw shaping water buffalo horn nocks and strike plate I did test shooting, ca. 100 arrows, and everything was working fine. Then final sanding, some 8 layers of TruOil, leather handle and recycled Dacron string from a broken bow and my "Toy Bow" was ready for action. Now after some 200 more arrows the bow is still alive, no compression fractures on the belly and it shoots fine. Very happy with my "Toy Bow".
Length 62,3" ntn, 85 lbs @ 28" and 75 lbs @ 26".
