How best to tidy up some yew.

[muttley9050]

Got these two bits of yew

Gunna make a few bits with them and want to leave a waney edge., but what's the best way to remove bark an tidy up sap wood. Thanks.

James

[delabodge]

hi james ,firstly looks like its oak,,,but pictures not great,(and irrelavant anyway,) you could axe off the worst loose bark, I use a drawknife when needed, then a turboplane if you have one, or a sanding pad in a anglegrinder,

[muttley9050]

Thanks clive. These are two more of the boards from the gun stock maker. Has yew chalked on end grain, and bark looks like yew, but you are right it does look oakey... May have to do a proper i.d. on it later. Thanks for advice. Off to Google what a turboplane is.

[muttley9050]

Ok I checked out the turbo plane and it looks good, does it come out of the box enough to justify the £100 price tag? And clive, your right it is oak,blushing, goes to show, just coz somethings written down, doesn't mean its right, now I question if the countless other species I got from him are labelled correctly.

[Big Beech]

TP is good, a little pricey, but yeh another tool in the box.

i would suggest an hour paying with it, quite an art as i found its initially very grabby but after a little use the edge is off slightly and works much better.

 

s

[delabodge]

dont own one to be honest james,,,i drawknife,and axe everything,,,bought all the arbotech stuff and use very little of it,,,,,spend your money on a good anglegrinder pad and crack on...just spent another day at a show in london today,,blinding,,very rewarding for all my hard winter hours,,,

[muttley9050]

Thanks guys, I've done the edges already. Mixture of large and small drawknife and spoke shave. Then radial sanders. Didn't take too long. I think id need to have some serious shaping to do to spend 100 on one of them and I'm not really into carving.

Well done on show clive great news. Got a two week show starting on 9th of June I'm getting prepared for. Bit if a strange one but should be ok. Bucks open studios. From home. With 6 other different artists/crafters. All peeps I live with. Fingers crossed.

[delabodge]

sounds good james, will have too pop over for a coffee, pm the details

cheers

clive

[muttley9050]

Yes Clive you would be more than welcome. Think were open for 10 days of the two weeks. I'll just double check the dates and pm the details. Cheers James

[ucoulddoit]

I removed the bark from yew a few times and found it quite time consuming but worth the effort. I was keen to retain as much of the natural shape as possible and therefore used a drawknife and chisel. I've not used a turbo plane but wonder if it would tend to flatten out the undulations on a natural edge? Once most of the bark was removed I used a circular wire drill brush - the brush had hard nylon wires rather than steel - which was able to get into the small crevices and recesses. Then finished off with a Black and Decker cushion drum sander and a bit of hand sanding. In the crevices that the drum sander couldn't get into, I found the wire drill brush left a sort of burnished finish which blended nicely into the sanded areas.

 

Andrew