Mary Rose Longbows

[lonbow]

I habe a warbow stave with 135 rings per inch. The density of it is very high: it must be more then 0.8. The heartwood is quite dark an the wood feels greasy. The wood grew on a southern slope (altitude about 700 m) and the ground is calcareous (fertile and ideal for yew trees) and very dry. The yew grew together with pine trees. Yews from nearby, that grew on wetter grounds, have bigger growth rings. I am planning to build a warbow out of it in the next months. I´m already very curious about it!

I think the high density of the wood might be ideal for warbows. Dense yew wood tends to be grown slowly, but I´ve heard that there are exceptions. However, I think that the average english yew doesn´t have the density of alpine yew. (Am I correct there? I must admit, that I´ve never seen a bow made of english yew.) But I´ve made several bows of yews from gardens, which were good, but in average not as good as bows made out of alpine yew. The disadvantage of very slowly grown yew is that there tend to be more growth deffects.

[Del the cat]

It's pretty much self evident that where there are plenty of Yew trees you will find more long clean straight staves and statistically you are more likely to find good quality wood.
I have had good English Yew some of it with finer rings than high altitude stuff (for the reasons pointed out by Willie).
Some friends of mine paid for a bunch of High altitude Austrian Yew which is scruffy, full of knots and pretty much rubbish.
There are several issues... the quality of the wood and the quality of the stave.
I had a chat to a Canadian Bowyer and he showed me a load of pictures... where he is you can't hardly move for forest (probably bigger than Essex) with plenty of Yew, so obviously he'll have a lot more clean straight staves!
It's like the old question... what's the best wood for making a bow... answer.. the bit you actually have!
Del

[lonbow]

That´s right Dell! The wood you have is the best

And you actually have to look a lot until you find a good peace of slowly grown yew!

[wizardgoat]

Anyone with access to loads of yew wood with note the differences in quality, and in my experiences elevation isn’t the whole story, and a lot of the best yew I’ve cut has been lower elevation, in very shady mossy lush forests.  Sometimes even 2 staves from the same log will have slight differences, sometimes big differences.
When you rasp a piece of yew, the density becomes very apparent.  I love a solid, dense, heavy, dark stave, but dimensionally they get quite small if your making a bow less than 40#.
At the end of the day, you never know what you have until your bending it. I’ve made yew bows from staves at sea level in full sunlight and they were great.
Even in yew country, if I find 50 trees, I might cut 2 or 3.

[lonbow]

@wizardgoat
I agree 100%!

[Woodely]

I guess it just shows that Yew is all over the map literally.  Sea level,  Alpine, west coast the wood has variations in grain structure, knots, defects and color.  A few years back I bought some Yew planks a full 3" thick and about 50" long. When they were ripped down to workable size to make lams they twisted like pretzels instantly.  Unreal the wood was under tension, I barely got any usable lams for making bows, a few that were about 1/16" to 1/8" thick  by 1 5/8" wide.  And the wood was full of knots but on the surface they were not visible.  I paid over $50.00 for the boards. 

[willie]

I guess it just shows that Yew is all over the map literally..............

wizard, del and other experienced yewguys

in general, is high density a good indicator for a good stave. Ever make a  surprisingly good bow from light density yew?

[DC]

Yup

[wizardgoat]

high density in yew, and a few other factors are always good qualities, and I’ve made plenty bows from medium or low density stuff though, you just have to design them accordingly. 

[Del the cat]

I've never weighed wood density, but my warbow test pilot has commented that some bows feel light in the hand and some heavy, but with no real correlation in performance.
If you go with the mass theory, then it shouldn't matter anyway! The lower density wood will just produce a slightly bulkier bow.
Del

[Badger]

I've never weighed wood density, but my warbow test pilot has commented that some bows feel light in the hand and some heavy, but with no real correlation in performance.
If you go with the mass theory, then it shouldn't matter anyway! The lower density wood will just produce a slightly bulkier bow.
Del

   Del, exactly right. The lower density yew just produces a larger bow as far as I can tell. Yew bows I take off 10% right from the start anyway. The low density stuff I have worked usually ranges from about 12 to 20 rings per inch. I haven't made anything over about 50# with it.

[Marc St Louis]

I picked up a stave off ebay several years ago.  It probably had less than 10 rings per inch and the wood was pale but it was quite strong.  I've had wood with more than 40 rings per inch that were not as good