This was a fun bow to make! I recently broke a mulberry bow in the handle (big hole at handle area but I thought it would make a cool feature, oops) so I wanted to start another bow quickly to forget about the mulberry.
A bowyer who lives near me gave me a small diameter yew sapling. He did not want to mess with it since it developed some sideways bend while drying (see pic below). He roughed it out on his bandsaw already so I could start with it immediately. (I don’t have a bandsaw or any other power tools so roughing out takes me some effort/time usually)
I had it braced within an our or so but of course the string did not line up at all. I clamped it belly up in my heat treat form and heat treated each limb for about 30 minutes. This aligned it good enough to finish tillering to 28 inches. After narrowing the handle a bit the string still did not line up enough so now I clamped it sideways to bend the handle with some dry heat. I got lucky because it worked in one 10 minute session.
The bow ended up 68 inches nock to nock and exactly 50 lbs at 28 inch. If it keeps some reflex I might pike it a bit but it shoots really smooth now so not sure yet.
Because is has a lot of sapwood and the heartwood is really light coloured I decided to give it a little color on the fades to light it up. Took some water colour markers from my daughter and just blended it directly on the wood.
Handle is some leather from an old jacket I got for 2 euros at the flea market. Finished with danish oil and an old fast flight string which happened to be the right size.
Below some pictures, I hope you like the bow!
// unbraced profiles
// details
// braced
// stave
// handle
// fulldraw
