he said that yew is a rubbish bow wood if you want a long lasting bow....
Hi, ChrisD i hope you didn't think i or the bowmaker was putting Yew wood down in my quote?
I was just after a bow that was worth it's money and would stand up to the job.
The bowmaker in question gave his opinion freely,and as it's been said yew bows can be a lot of cash for a good one, but being from the UK it just seem that your head is saying go for the bow that will last a lifetime and will roll with the knocks and your heart says.....YEW BOW ALL THE WAY BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for all of the informion and help people have put on the subject but the jury is still out on this one........ hhmmmmm Yew......
I've followed this topic for a while now and have been thinking about the directions that the discussion has taken and how some have interpreted the question. I'd like to add a bit of context to what I've already said if I may?
First off, of course yew is good - its still used in many of the finest bows no matter what the type.
Secondly, in the context of the English Warbow, it was certainly the best available at the time for that type of design and those requirements. It needs to be remembered that part of the reason for the design was probably suitability for mass production and efficient materials use, maybe to the detriment of out and out performance - a given failure rate of the bows (if thats what happened) does not necesarily mean there was a problem with the material. The burgundian bow mentioned in Soars book and the mysterious 'Broad Bow' indicate that bowyers could optimise performance well enough if they needed to.
Thirdly, we know that yew from all over Europe was imported to England for warbows and that therefore, for historic significance alone, ownership of such a thing has huge value to any dedicated student of archery history. This is especially true of Italian yew because we know that Henry VIII ordered 40000 such staves prior to his French campaigns, that in the end only 20000 could be delivered (presumably the order strained supplies) and that it is therefore extremely likely that many(possibly all) of the MR bows are actually of North Italian origin.
Finally, there is the question of performance. There is a great deal of discussion about how one type of yew performs compared with another and websites have been quoted saying what size a tree should be to yield such and such a performance. I don't think anyone can really know because even the most experienced bowyers of today have limited quantities of wood to work with and we don't really have a way of measuring materials quality against that available to bowyers of the past. What is more, even the most prolific bowyers today will only make EWB's in the hundreds in a commercial lifetime, while in mediaeval times, a bowyer might have made or supervised the production of tens thousands in a working life. Finally, we know from Richard Wadges research that the requirement for staves was vast - they must have taken pretty much everything they could get!! I will say this though. In Hugh Soars book 'Secrets of the Warbow', details of experiments are given of how an Italian Yew bow was the equal of others about 20-30lb heavier. I have only owned one Italian yew bow and I eventually broke it - but having owned a series of heavier bows since, I can say that even at the end of its working life, it still cast as far as a bow 20lb or so heavier. This will have been contributed to by the fact that I was better able to use it than I am some of my heavier equipment which is harder to master - but the Italian yew nevertheless punched well above its weight.
I hope these comments put my earlier thoughts in context - any ire directed my way please.
Chris
