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questions about yew

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stuckinthemud:
OK, so, I have roughed out a yew crossbow, based on proportions of a surviving heavy crossbow from the 13th century.  It has 2 inches of reflex, and is 2 1/4" (55mm) wide, 1.5" (40mm) thick.  Tapers are roughed in with width and thickness reducing at 1mm per inch.   If I could do anything with this, draw-weight would be somewhere above 800# draw weight at 10"draw.  I have removed most of the sapwood as I plan on using a layer or two of sinew.

First question, do I need to remove/reduce the reflex?

If yes, then should I boil it, steam it or use dry heat - it is fully seasoned being cut 4 years ago.

My feeling is that this is more bow than I can tiller, the most heavy bow I have done is about 130.  Would you run with it, or, take it down to a more manageable 250 to 300lb?

DC:
How long is it? I'm having a tough time imagining even bending it. Bending it would be like lifting an engine. You could spend hours exercising it using a block and tackle :)

stuckinthemud:
Really short, 34 inches, much shorter than other known examples which are between 40 and 50 inches long.  I'm thinking a car jack would be helpful, but realistically  I think I need to reduce thickness by 1/3

Del the cat:
Dunno... but if it's going to be sinewed you are probably ok with the reflex.
I think the only way you'll find out is to build it, taking care to measure and document everything for the mk2
My guess is the thickness is way to much and could be reduced by 1/3 or maybe even 1/2.
I'd say you are better off building something much thinner and more manageable and then scaling up the results by the appropriate factors as you will get some good data, rather than building something that either breaks or can't be braced/drawn
Del

stuckinthemud:
I pretty much agree, these crossbows are very very addictive.  The last one I built yielded a lot of really useful data and maybe I'll be more comfortable to go full fat with the next one. Taking 1/3 off seems a sensible way forward

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