Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: Woodely on February 26, 2019, 12:51:00 pm
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I read an article about the Mary Rose artifacts. It states that English Yew bows found had up to 152 growth rings per inch. The typical yew from Oregon is about 50 rings per inch. It also states that the Yew was from Spain, Italy and other countries with cooler climates and slower growing trees. This fact does not make sense, these other countries would not be cooler than England. And secondly wetter and cooler climates produce wood that matures faster having less growth rings, hence (Oregon Yew). Trees from a hotter drier climate produce wood that is denser and having more growth rings per inch. Maybe someone can clarify me on this if its correct or not.
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I believe the tree were high elevation Yew
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It's the altitude and soil that impacts it as well. Plus a likely shorter growing season at high altitude.
FWIW you can end up with exceptionally fine rings in areas where the wood shouldn't be like that and vice versa.
Oregon has a lot of variety in its climate and elevation as well.
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The Mary Rose bows don't have 150 rings. I've handled them, they're on par with good American yew. 50 to 80 is about right. Some were actually far coarser than that.
Also, there are plenty of countries that get much, much colder than us here in the UK, and once you get into the Alps where the really dense Austrian yew grows it's even colder.
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"Up to" Implying that was perhaps the high count, not the norm.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/16/4c/23/164c2326f0ff36e17ef6a0c927db090e.jpg
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There was a second, where I thought I was looking at a fingerprint. :)
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It's the altitude and soil that impacts it as well. Plus a likely shorter growing season at high altitude.
FWIW you can end up with exceptionally fine rings in areas where the wood shouldn't be like that and vice versa.
Oregon has a lot of variety in its climate and elevation as well.
Even still I think you would be hard pressed to find Yew with over 60-70 rings per inch in Oregon. Elevation does enter the equation when it comes to wood density, never entered my mind.
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I’m not too familiar with the Mary Rose, but I have worked with Pacific Yew staves from both the trunk and branches; I have found that some branches have VERY tight growth rings. Maybe some are branches? Thoughts?
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I like Yew branches but I've found that some are really good but some seem kind of mushy, no spring to them. I'm wondering if it's has to do with the amount of sapwood compared to heartwood because on some you end up with sapwood almost completely surrounding the limb. That said, I would never turn down a decent limb. ;D
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Don't worry about ring count...
I made a 100# warbow from fast grown lowland Yew which had 3 rings per inch in some places :o and was generally about 5 or 6!
I've had a guy showing off the fine rings on his high altitude Italian Yew stave, and I've picked up a scrap of Low altitude English Yew from my off cut pile and showed him it was finer!
Treat each bit of wood on it's own merits.
IMO we (UK) probably imported Yew because of availability rather than quality. If you can get an Italian wine producer to include a bunch of staves as a tax on his produce you'll do it won't you? And will that Italian wine importer spend ages searching for the best staves? No, he'll probably send his youngest son to get whatever he can... and why is it high altitude? Maybe 'cos all the fertile lowland is used for farming?
The paragraph above is just guesswork, but it is there to counter some of the myths and dodgy conclusions that "historians" jump to.
Del
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Del,
I'm sure quality of yew varies/varied considerably within regions and it would be very hard to compare different regions to each other with any definitive certainty. I agree and doubt medieval/early modern bowyers cared much at all about growth rings per inch instead of the overall suitability of yew staves. I would be interested to know your (or anyone's) thoughts concerning what's said in this source:
From The Art of Archery, c. 1515, anonymous (I like this source so much better than Toxiphilus, which is long-winded , specifically mentions Portuguese and Italian (Alpine)yew and contrasts them:
"First of all, bows can be made of any wood, but the best are of yew. Respecting this, Petrus de Crescens says, that yew is only useful for making bows and crossbows, and that there are two sorts of it, the white and the red. The white is called Portuguese yew, and it is usually soft and of open grain. And the more open the grain of a wood is, the softer it naturally is. On the other hand the redder yew is called Italian yew. This is found of straighter grain than any other, and has a sharper cast, and there is no comparison in the time it retains its strength. However, it is harder to work, and to string at first, and breaks more easily than the white Portuguese yew..."
One could interpret this statement in a lot of different ways. It doesn't necessarily mean that imported yew from the regions of Portugal or Italy was significantly better than local English yew sources. But it's interesting to note that these are the author's classification for yew in general (he doesn't even mention English yew or any other kinds), indicating at least a great deal of it was imported from these regions and that they were considered distinct from each other and had pros and cons. My thought is either the quality of yew from these regions was better in quality than English grown yew (as is commonly thought), OR as you said, the quantity of yew then grown in these regions was Much greater than any found native to England at that time (a lot has been planted since then).
(note: this thread might be better placed in the English Warbow thread)
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One could interpret this in a lot of different ways, and doesn't necessarily mean that imported woods literally from Portugal or Italy (neither of which really existed as countries back then)
Huh?
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Ok that was somewhat clumsily written.
Edited and clarified: "One could interpret this statement in a lot of different ways. It doesn't necessarily mean that imported yew from the regions of (what is now) Portugal or Italy was significantly better than local English yew sources."
note: Portugal, definitely a kingdom/empire for a long time (1100s to 1900s), though which family had control of it varied; there was a long stretch were it was ruled by the same rulers of the rest of Iberia. Italy my point about it not being a country back then stands. It wasn't unified until the mid-late 1800s.
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don't know if yew is like other conifers I have tested, but a close ring count can occur for a number of reasons.
slow growth can be caused by shading from the overstory and by poor health/overmaturity of the tree.
some fine ringed woods within the same species I have tested is much weaker than others, and I suspect came from a less healthy tree, than from one that might be simply shaded, but in otherwise good health.
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don't know if yew is like other conifers I have tested, but a close ring count can occur for a number of reasons.
slow growth can be caused by shading from the overstory and by poor health/overmaturity of the tree.
some fine ringed woods within the same species I have tested is much weaker than others, and I suspect came from a less healthy tree, than from one that might be simply shaded, but in otherwise good health.
Bravo!
Yup, exactly!
That's what I've been banging on about for the last umpteen years :)
Del
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I habe a warbow stave with 135 rings per inch. The density of it is very high: it must be more then 0.8. The heartwood is quite dark an the wood feels greasy. The wood grew on a southern slope (altitude about 700 m) and the ground is calcareous (fertile and ideal for yew trees) and very dry. The yew grew together with pine trees. Yews from nearby, that grew on wetter grounds, have bigger growth rings. I am planning to build a warbow out of it in the next months. I´m already very curious about it!
I think the high density of the wood might be ideal for warbows. Dense yew wood tends to be grown slowly, but I´ve heard that there are exceptions. However, I think that the average english yew doesn´t have the density of alpine yew. (Am I correct there? I must admit, that I´ve never seen a bow made of english yew.) But I´ve made several bows of yews from gardens, which were good, but in average not as good as bows made out of alpine yew. The disadvantage of very slowly grown yew is that there tend to be more growth deffects.
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It's pretty much self evident that where there are plenty of Yew trees you will find more long clean straight staves and statistically you are more likely to find good quality wood.
I have had good English Yew some of it with finer rings than high altitude stuff (for the reasons pointed out by Willie).
Some friends of mine paid for a bunch of High altitude Austrian Yew which is scruffy, full of knots and pretty much rubbish.
There are several issues... the quality of the wood and the quality of the stave.
I had a chat to a Canadian Bowyer and he showed me a load of pictures... where he is you can't hardly move for forest (probably bigger than Essex) with plenty of Yew, so obviously he'll have a lot more clean straight staves!
It's like the old question... what's the best wood for making a bow... answer.. the bit you actually have!
Del
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That´s right Dell! The wood you have is the best ;)
And you actually have to look a lot until you find a good peace of slowly grown yew!
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Anyone with access to loads of yew wood with note the differences in quality, and in my experiences elevation isn’t the whole story, and a lot of the best yew I’ve cut has been lower elevation, in very shady mossy lush forests. Sometimes even 2 staves from the same log will have slight differences, sometimes big differences.
When you rasp a piece of yew, the density becomes very apparent. I love a solid, dense, heavy, dark stave, but dimensionally they get quite small if your making a bow less than 40#.
At the end of the day, you never know what you have until your bending it. I’ve made yew bows from staves at sea level in full sunlight and they were great.
Even in yew country, if I find 50 trees, I might cut 2 or 3.
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@wizardgoat
I agree 100%!
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I guess it just shows that Yew is all over the map literally. Sea level, Alpine, west coast the wood has variations in grain structure, knots, defects and color. A few years back I bought some Yew planks a full 3" thick and about 50" long. When they were ripped down to workable size to make lams they twisted like pretzels instantly. Unreal the wood was under tension, I barely got any usable lams for making bows, a few that were about 1/16" to 1/8" thick by 1 5/8" wide. And the wood was full of knots but on the surface they were not visible. I paid over $50.00 for the boards. >:(
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I guess it just shows that Yew is all over the map literally..............
wizard, del and other experienced yewguys
in general, is high density a good indicator for a good stave. Ever make a surprisingly good bow from light density yew?
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Yup :)
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high density in yew, and a few other factors are always good qualities, and I’ve made plenty bows from medium or low density stuff though, you just have to design them accordingly.
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I've never weighed wood density, but my warbow test pilot has commented that some bows feel light in the hand and some heavy, but with no real correlation in performance.
If you go with the mass theory, then it shouldn't matter anyway! The lower density wood will just produce a slightly bulkier bow.
Del
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I've never weighed wood density, but my warbow test pilot has commented that some bows feel light in the hand and some heavy, but with no real correlation in performance.
If you go with the mass theory, then it shouldn't matter anyway! The lower density wood will just produce a slightly bulkier bow.
Del
Del, exactly right. The lower density yew just produces a larger bow as far as I can tell. Yew bows I take off 10% right from the start anyway. The low density stuff I have worked usually ranges from about 12 to 20 rings per inch. I haven't made anything over about 50# with it.
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I picked up a stave off ebay several years ago. It probably had less than 10 rings per inch and the wood was pale but it was quite strong. I've had wood with more than 40 rings per inch that were not as good