Sunday 20 November 2011

Yew Log

I harvested a Yew log at the weekend, with some help from my wife.
I'd organised the harvest/purchase with the Forestry Commission. I made initial contact with them by E-mailing a picture of me pointing out the piece of wood I wanted.
They were very helpful and allowed me vehicular access to the woodland, which was handy as it would have been a fair way to drag the wood otherwise. The weather was lovely and my parents came along for the ride too!
You can see the piece I cut is just a side branch, Yew woodland is a protected environment so one wouldn't be allowed to cut a whole tree.
The yew isn't quite as good as I'd remembered, but the heartwood is nice and dark and I think I should get at least one longbow and one shorter primitive out of it, possibly a pair of billets to splice together for a third bow.
I cut the log as long as I could, I shall have to study it carefully before I saw it any further to maximise the use of the wood.
Driving around the woodland elicited some odd looks from the dog walkers, I took the trouble to tell them that I had permission as I didn't want to create any consternation.

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