How did bowyers harvest so much yew?

[OTDEAN]

Forget Yew, get yourself out there in the miserable wet English weather and cut yourself some weeds (ash) and make some lovely fast longbows and flatbows.  Yew is for noobes 

[brian]

   Or come to Wales, get even wetter and cut some   Wych Elm ,if you can find it in the fog.

[yew hunter]

Been tracking down the perfect yew stave over here on vancouver island canada, for a couple of years now and have seen and split alot of yew, and have noted a few things.

- ring count and altitude seem to have no relation, it has more to do with light, water, and soil. I've found 50 rpi at 2 feet of altitude ( I was standing in the ocean while I cut it off the rock)
- The best staves seem to come from "leaders" where the tree splits off into smaller trees, the host tree can be a nasty mess of twist and limbs but can host straight leaders. those pieces in the pic look alot like leaders.
- Found many blow down yew in my travels (usually they go over with a large cedar) the ones that survive are interesting pieces because you can see in the ring count when the tree went over, the water soil and light are dramatically changed, you end up with two distinct ring counts -lower rpi closer to the center tighter rpi near the edge.
- The opposite occurs at the edge of a logging cut block, when the forest is cut back and a yew tree is left standing the growth rate increases drastically and you get two different ring counts.
-I believe that tree farming yew would have been possible because you don't need alot of material to build a bow, all you really need is 5inches round by 80inches long, that would make 20rpi in 50 years.
- The blow down yews seem to naturally grow multiple leaders which more often than not seem to be straight even though the host can be very twisted, and is living on its side.
- Figure out how to grow leaders, add alot of man hours and you got yourself a yew stave farm.

[wizardgoat]

Where on the island do you live yew hunter?

[yew hunter]

Top of the island, at the end of the road. Port Hardy. You should check it out sometime, lots of yew around if you look in the right spots.

[joachimM]

Dont forget the english roved most of europe to get their yew. Due to the english, yew turned from a common to a rare species. Harvesting wasnt exactly sustainable at the peak of the demand.
For every yew bow a bowyer made, he had to make at least one bow from other wood so as to spare the yew. Forgot where I read this, though

[WillS]

It was 2 meane wood bows for every yew bow, I believe. 

It's interesting how important ring count is when discussing American yew.  I don't know if it's just an international belief that ring count is important or if it actually means more with American yew as it's a different species but there's certainly no correlation with European yew ring count and bow performance. 

You can get impossibly fine-grained European yew that makes terrible bows, and stuff with 5 rings to the inch that can reach 120lb and still be physically lighter/smaller than you'd expect.

It seems to me that it's the health of a tree that makes the difference, not the ring count.  Growing conditions and quality of soil are crucial.  One of my favourite bows was a 105lb English yew bow that I roughed out to be 50lb.  It's the same size as a 50lb bow but the final draw weight was far higher than I thought it would be.  It's got 6 rings to the inch on average, and heartwood showing through the back due to odd growing conditions and yet it took no set at all and shot beautifully for years before it chrysalled at a pin knot.

[joachimM]

Ring count, guess it's the human nature to value rare things more than common things.
Everyone wants elk sinew for sinew backing, but I bet cow sinew works just as well.

[medicinewheel]

I just recently learned that yew has an incredible ability to fully overcrow cut off twigs or even branches. The expert who told me is convinced that this sort of cleaning out was a major part of the wood management over a looooong period of time resulting in a great amount of usable staves.

[yew hunter]

-10 rpi or less would make farming yew even that much more possible.

-I have noted two large differences in loose and tight rpi in pacific yew. The first one is that   tight rpi yew seems to have much richer colour in the heart wood which makes a better contrast of colour between the sap and heart wood. The second thing to note which is probably more important, loose rpi wood has a far greater possibility to "shatter" when you split it, I've seen loose rpi do some unpredictable things. tight rpi is much easier to stave.

[JW_Halverson]

You can get impossibly fine-grained European yew that makes terrible bows, and stuff with 5 rings to the inch that can reach 120lb and still be physically lighter/smaller than you'd expect.

And with the "meane" wood bows I make, the rule of thumb has always been that the denser the wood within it's species, the better the bow! Goes to show, yew simply does not play by the rules. 

[WillS]

yew simply does not play by the rules. 

Never had a truer word been spoken!

[Ruddy Darter]

Dont forget the english roved most of europe to get their yew. Due to the english, yew turned from a common to a rare species. Harvesting wasnt exactly sustainable at the peak of the demand.
For every yew bow a bowyer made, he had to make at least one bow from other wood so as to spare the yew. Forgot where I read this, though

I did read that during Spanish civil wars in the 14th&15th century some major yew groves where set to fire and destroyed by factions not allied to the English, as much to prevent trade and income as well as English warbow maufacture,

Ruddy Darter.

[joachimM]

And with the "meane" wood bows I make, the rule of thumb has always been that the denser the wood within it's species, the better the bow! Goes to show, yew simply does not play by the rules.

I'm not so sure yew doesn't play by the rules. I rather think that ring count is often not a good predictor of density. Not just for yew, but in general. I've seen some woods with rings of 2 cm wide of equal density as same species woods with 10 rings per cm, and intermediate staves being much lighter. I've been fooled by ring count a lot.

[WillS]

That may be true, but yew is still an enigma!  It can tolerate serious ring violations, ridiculous knots, bad tillers, splinters and cracks across the grain... Crazy stuff.