Sam, thanks for the thread and photo as it brings back many fond memories of harvesting our Pacific Yew in Oregon ( I know all the "yew" jokes). For several years I purchased standing Yew trees from private lands and as a pre-harvest before logging operations began. Yews are understory trees and do not survive well in the open sun after logging has removed the conifer canopies that protect them. This has been so long before we began harvesting the bark for extraction of Taxanes for Bristol-Meyers Squibb to produce their trademarked named drug, Taxol so in truth this harvesting did not "decimate" the Yew in these parts. The state of Oregon has a full and extensive inventory of Yews in the state and it's pretty extensive. I have no idea what goes on in Canada, however. An interesting point is there were two companies involved, B-M Squibb and a Colorado company named NAPRO. I sold to both, but B-M Squibb had enough bureaucratic clout to get the FDA to not approve NAPRO's method of taxane extraction from the bark. This put B-M Squibb as the only extractor in the world. Well, there actually was a small company from England that came over at the end of the bark harvest and bought up several thousand kilos of bark for processing. B-M Squibb had discontinued domestic harvesting and was closing in on partial synthesizing
I set up a sawmill to cut Yew lumber specifically and it was fun cutting thousands of board feet for the flooring industry. I shipped several high quality loads of Yew logs to veneer companies
"Pippy" refers to the tight knots formed when the tree forms bud growth. The only bending problem you might encounter is they sometimes simply fall out....not all tightly encased. You might consider super glue on the pips before bending if they appear suspicious.
Yew is not an oily wood and glues fine. It's density is a bit less than rock maple...pretty heavy for an evergreen softwood never the less.
Yews are female or male tress and require pollination to reproduce so we find them generally in Groves and rarely as single trees.
I don't believe the toxicity is any higher or lower than any other wood dust. It depends on one's chemical sensitivity. Ipe and walnut can produce blisters on me, but never a problem with Yew. All wood dust should be considered nasal carcinogenic. Perhaps the Yew's "tree of death" status in European mythology is taken a bit to far as it means the Yew is revered as part of the life-death cycle and not "death causing".
Here's some old photos of some Yews we harvested. Yew log deck and the frame of the sawmill cover my son and I built. Bark and log harvesting operation. We used flails to remove the winter bark. I ran several crews at different times. Several loads of veneer logs being readied for shipment. I once bought a yew log from the BLM for $1.00 and the veneer mill, sliced and sold the veneer for $12,000 of which I got half..told you fond memories
Photo of some standing yews left after logging the conifers which I had purchased. Sorry for the long post..hope you find it interesting.
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