Wood
Yew timber
Yew timber → Yew bow stave
Picture to come.
Wood of the yew, a slow-growing evergreen of chalk and limestone country and churchyards. Its dense, elastic wood, combining pale sapwood and darker heartwood, makes excellent bows, and yew bows are known from prehistoric Britain. In the 12th century bows were also made of other woods: Gerald of Wales recorded about 1188 that Welsh bows were of elm, not yew. Large-scale yew stave imports came later.
Caveats (confidence: medium)
The scale of yew bow-making in 12th-century England is not documented in sources consulted.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
Made by
- Fell timber
Used to make
- Hew a common beam
- Bole-smelt lead
- Hew a rough beam with stone tools
- Rive planks with wedge and hammer
- Make a stone hammer
- Forge a pit saw
- Forge a knife
- Forge a sickle
- Forge shears
- Make a wooden spade
- Make a pack saddle
- Forge an awl
- Forge a drawknife
- Forge a chisel
- Whittle a spindle
- Split yew bow staves
- Lash up crude bellows
- Bole-smelt lead from dressed ore
Used to build
- Charcoal clamp
- Sawpit
- Hewing floor
- Forge
- Loom
- Mason's yard
- Bare tanning pit