yew for longbow

[flatyre]

A mate has asked me to keep an eye out for a piece of yew as he wants to make a longbow, problem is I know nothing about longbows other than they are roughly the height of the user, in this case about six feet. How thick a piece of yew does he need? is the bow made from the heartwood? Green? any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Vespasian]

Apparently English longbows were made of all sorts of wood, not just Yew..

 

Shards of the Dark Age: A Few Points on English Longbows

[agg221]

Yew longbows use the heartwood on the inside for compression and the sapwood on the outside for tension. The ideal is straight and clean without knots but I have seen some surprisingly twisted bits used successfully. You are looking for a piece around 6" to 8" diameter - much smaller and the interface between heartwood and sapwood is too curved in the section, bigger and the sapwood can get rather thin. It doesn't matter if there are knots up one side - you only need a wedge shaped section. The best option is to split it rather than saw it - that way you know how the grain runs. If you split it end to end with wedges, then split that in half again so you have a quarter then that is about the best size to dry. If you are good at cleaving then on the larger end you could probably get away with eighths.

 

Alec

[Chippy]

Loads of it here

 

http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/general-chat/99805-what-do-yew.html

[Haironyourchest]

I read that in the middle ages the demand for yew by the English and Welsh for bows was such that the yew stocks of Europe ran dangerously low, till kings were issuing decrees forbidding the felling of any more yew trees. To this day the european yew has not fully recovered! And now they've discovered a cancer treatment chemical in yew leaves.

[Stubby]

I read that in the middle ages the demand for yew by the English and Welsh for bows was such that the yew stocks of Europe ran dangerously low, till kings were issuing decrees forbidding the felling of any more yew trees. To this day the european yew has not fully recovered! And now they've discovered a cancer treatment chemical in yew leaves.

 

Its only the first inch or so of the new growth . Have done a lot of yew hedge cutting for a French pharmaceutical company a few years back .