How far, how fast?

[stuckinthemud]

Ok, so, I want to see what weight a stave will give me, I am NOT chasing a draw weight.  I have a decent quality yew stave and the tapers are ones I have used before.  At the get go, the bend is good and there is zero set with the bow bending a few inches but not at low brace. There are schools of thought about teaching the bow to bend.  So, how hard do you chase the bend.  The primary aim for this build is to get as close as possible to zero set, so using the beginning of set as a guide is not one I want to use. I haven’t heated in any reflex but I want the bow to be dead straight when finished.

[superdav95]

Im by no means an expert in yew and still learning.  that being said ive noticed that creeping up on the tiller with yew in particular is best.  i guess one could say that with all wood species bows.  Good osage is way more forgiving imo.  Its very easy to mess up on a yew wood bow as its relatively soft and scrapes can take off more wood then expected.  Creeping in on the tiller i find is best and i like to sand with 150 grit after each scrape session then work in the limbs with some bending.  I like to start early with even bend on both sides throughout the entire bending portion of the limb.  ive heard some like to get the inners looking good and then focus on the outers.  I find i tend to do that with osage but not with yew.  I find that yew tends to take more set then osgage or fire hardened white woods like hickory.  Even when i have done some heat corrections on yew to try and remove some deflex it tends to creep back to original deflex.  With yew i find it does not seem to hurt its performance though.  It seems to be nice and springy wood regardless to a point.  Ive had a few explode on me over the last few years and learned that too much heat is an enemy to yew.  anyway for what its worth i tend to creep up it as far as tiller goes with yew in particular.  getting the bend nice and spread out through entire limb evenly early on working towards brace seems to keep set to minimum.