Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: Aaron H on March 19, 2014, 09:15:35 am
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How would the experienced yew bowyers out there debark your yew stave to make an English style longbow? This will be my first time working with yew, and I am wanting to use a combination of the sapwood with the heartwood. From what I understand, you do not want to violate the growth ring of the sapwood directly underneath the bark. I watched a video of a guy taking some of the bark off with a drawknife, and then using a cabinet scraper perpendicular to the stave to finish removing the rest of the bark, seemed time consuming, yet effective.
Your help is greatly appreciated.
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White woods are what u don't wanna violate the ring under the bark. With yew, u want to scrape the sapwood down to about a 1/4". Ring violations do not matter as much. Others will chime in.
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I've only done a handful of yew selfbows, but I use a drawknife for the worst of the bark removal, then a spokeshave, and finally a scraper for chasing a ring (which is often unnecessary).
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Chasing a ring is unnecessary?
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Yes, usually. Yew is not particularly picky about having a perfect single back ring. I've only chased a ring once on a yew bow... it was a warbow. All the others I just made the sapwood a consistent thickness. It's also often hard to chase a ring because yew rings are so tight.
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That being said. if you can just remove the bark and leave the first layer of sapwood unspoiled as your back then you should. I only reduce the sapwood and violate the back if the sapwood is excessively thick. 1/4" is usually ideal but having thicker than that doesn't hurt much as long as you don't run out of heartwood on the belly through tillering.
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Cool, thanks guys
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From various bits and pieces of info I've been told/read here and there, with Pacific yew chasing a ring is important with warbows (80# and over) but less than that you can just reduce to a nice even thin layer and it will be fine.
I remove yew bark with a drawknife for the big chunks and if I'm reducing sapwood I'll use a spokeshave, drawknife and scraper at different stages, if the sapwood is a good thickness already I'll just rip off the dry bark with a drawknife and leave the cambium to sit there and protect the sap while I'm working and most will pop off or get removed as you work the edges.
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Yea, I am only making a 50# bow @ 27" this time around
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Seems to me (but not through first hand experience) that a yew selfbow with excessive sapwood will take more set.
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Were English longbows mostly bend through the handle design (D bows), or did they have stiff handles?
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Were English longbows mostly bend through the handle design (D bows), or did they have stiff handles?
Depends on the era and what you consider an 'English' longbow. Medieval era warbows were tillered full compass, but Victorian era target bows had a stiff handle with a more elliptical tiller.
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Well it is for a friend of mine, who traced his lineage to the Anglo Saxons. So he wanted me to build him a long bow that could have been made sometime before 1100 AD by the Anglo Saxons. I really couldn't find any hard evidence of a bow like this being found.
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I can't think of a good example of a Norse bow from that era either. Someone may have more info. I believe they would have been a simple yew selfbow. For the sake of your own piece of mind, tiller it anyway you'd like! ;)
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Yea, all I can really do at this point is to make it based on the artwork found from this era. I will make it similar to an English longbow, but lighter in draw weight, based on the idea that they weren't used mainly for war, but for hunting
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Dull drawknife for bark removal.
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Ok, thanks Bryce. I always keep a dull drawknife, as well as a sharp one.
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Falcon, the best bow to use as a model is the Balinderry Bow. Eirik recently built one, there are pics over on PaleoPlanet and Facebook. The original is a Viking bow, but has almost IDENTICAL dimensions to the Mary Rose averages. Say 77" long, 40mm wide and 36mm deep in the handle. It will come out around 150# if you just tiller from those dimensions so obviously you'll need to make it smaller, but keep the length the same and don't do anything different in the handle.
The basic layout for the Balinderry/Mary Rose bows works like this:
Full width in the handle of course, and stays full width for 20cm each side of the center (so 40cm overall in the middle.) This you then taper to tips that are just over 1" wide. Belly taper is straight from center to tips half inch thick. As you tiller, and the bow reaches brace height, you then taper the last 8-10" to half inch wide tips. What you end up with is a belly taper straight from center to half inch tips, and a profile taper that is full width for a parallel 20cm, then tapers slowly until 8" from the end where it tapers again, this time more drastically to half inch wide tips.
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Cool, thanks WillS. Although the stave I have already is only 72".
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WillS, What is this metric system you speak of? ???
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72" should be fine, you're heading for a much lighter bow anyway.
Yeah, my measurements are a bit.... :o
I like to mix and match, because big numbers work neatly in inches, small numbers are nice in mm and the cm bits are just... In my head. It's natural to me! Not very helpful to others I suppose...haha!