I’ve often thought about using yew as a material for tip overlays. As attractive as the idea is though, I’ve always been conscious of the idea that yew heartwood is a little bit on the soft side to prevent string wear over time. Well at least on a heavy bow. I’m not convinced that a 50lb bow would suffer from too much trouble in this regard, and expect that the old adage that yew self nocks will cut through is only really applicable to bows with a war bow like weight.

With all that said, up until now I’ve avoided using yew heartwood as tip overlays, just in case they do fail. And also because I’ve never been short of alternative overlay materials such as buffalo horn, bone, antler, bog oak etc. And since these other materials look amazing on just about any bow, I’ve never really had the need to explore using yew. Well up until now that is!

The other day I chanced across the large mature yew pictured bellow. After admiring the size and beauty of this magnificent tree I couldn’t help but notice that it had a short section of very dead and blackened limb protruding from near the base of the tree.

This dead branch was so blackened on the outside that it drew me in for further investigation. Upon closer inspection this dead limb had clearly died off many years ago and had seen all of its white wood rot away leaving behind nothing but pure heartwood. I was curious to discover to what extent this black outer coating penetrated down into the underlying heartwood, so I sliced away at a small section with my pocket knife to expose the underlying material.

In the pictures above you can see where I sliced into the branch. The blackening was only surface level but directly below this blackened surface was a really nice, dark layer of heartwood. The first thing I noticed about this underlying dark layer of heart wood was how very hard it was. My pocket knife is pretty sharp but was struggling to make headway as I tried to dig down through this layer.

At this point my interest in this dead branch peaked. Unlike normal soft yew heart wood, this outer layer of rock hard yew heartwood would surely make for a very functional, not to mention beautiful, tip overlay material.

After further investigation of this exposed layer I could see that the reason for this hardening was a common process which many conifers perform when parts of their structure die off. In order to protect its self from pathogen ingress, conifers seal off dead parts by pumping sap bourn resins into the areas which form boundaries between dead and living parts. These resins fill the cells of the trees dying tissues and they eventually set hard like a super glue does once soaked into the pores of wood. The protective outer layer that this process provides protects the living parts of the tree from being colonised by pathogens which might otherwise colonise dead and dying part of the tree in close proximity to living parts.

All the bush crafters out there will have seen this process manifest as the “fatwood” phenomena which leads to the production of resin saturated dead branches on many species of conifer. Bush crafters will remove these “fatwood” branches from dead pine, spruce and fir trees to facilitate fire lighting, as these dead resin saturated branches are highly flammable and aid significantly in fire lighting processes.

I’ve never witnessed resin deposits in yew before however, so this was a learning opportunity for me. The resin deposit I was seeing here in this dead yew limb was nowhere near as extensive as occurs in many other conifer species but was clearly sufficient enough to have created a 3-4mm thick layer of very hard wood. This would be more than enough material to position against the back of a bows limb tip preventing the likelihood of a string cutting through a string grove cut across an overlay made from this particular yew heartwood.

Given that this limb was not affording this magnificent tree any benefit, I decided to “borrow” it for some experimentation. So making sure to leave several inches of dead resin filled wood at the base of the branch to offer protection to the living tree, I cut the dead limb off.

Initially I was a bit concerned with all the splitting which can clearly be seen in the photo above. But after closer inspection I could easily envisage finding plenty of spaces in between the myriad cracks to wrestle out plenty of overlays.

The wood was initially quite wet so after cleaving the rounds down into more manageable sizes I brought them indoors and sat them on top of the fireplace to dry out thoroughly. Splitting was minimal and they were a joy to work down to a suitable profile.

Below are a couple of photos of my first attempt at making overlays from this log. I think they look pretty cool. The string groves are cut right down through the lighter, softer heartwood up to the darker, harder resin impregnated section. This arrangement means that the colour contract between a white wood bow and the yew overlay is maximised, whilst also ensuring that the string only makes full contact with the hardest part of the overlay.

I’m currently toying with the idea of trying holy as an overlay material since it is pretty hard and a beautiful bright white. I imagine it would contrast sharply against something like a dark stained white wood. (Watch this space!)

If you found this article interesting then keep an eye out in your own local area for some resinous yew so you can give yew heartwood overlays a go. I think there is now a place for yew in my selection of tip overlay materials. What do you think? Please let me know in the comment section below!

Until next time!