The Yew I work with is from Vancouver Island, Canada. It is very workable and easy to control. The tight grain gives nice color variations and patterns. A mountain side was clear cut, with all commercial wood being removed, but the Yew was left to rot, a shame. I love working with it, making canes and staffs, but I am concerned with the toxicity rating. Can anyone tell me if holding a cane made of Yew would be dangerous to the user?

I can tell you from using a yew walking stick for over thirty years that I have had no health problems caused by the stick. ( unlike the 6 skin heads that had a go at me in a subway they found it to be very bad for tooth decay) this has been my companion since my spinal injury in the armed forces and I would recommend a yew walking stick to anyone in need it is strong light and flexible.

Yew has many uses but nearly every part of the plant is very toxic. I'd suggest gloves, mask/respirator and eye protection as a minimum when working - either with European or the Pacific northwest varieties, and perhaps a wrap of some sort for wherever contact is made with the skin on a finished object. That said, I agree, it's a beautiful wood and hard to come by. If you have an extra length or two I'd be quite interested.

No don't worry about the poison. I cut them often with hand and chain saws. Get covered in sawdust from head to toe and don't experience any problem with fresh of dried Yew wood.

The comments neglect an important mechanical property that made yew the wood of choice for longbows: The heartwood is highly resistant to compression, and the sapwood is highly resistant to tension. This meant that a bow carved along the heartwood / sapwood boundary had all the advantages of a composite wood bow (higher draw to weight ratio and livelier release) and none of the disadvantages (such as a tendency to loose strength and fall apart on hot, humid days).

I found European Yew EXTREMELY hard to turn for my purposes, which was making drumsticks for hand drums. The wood is quite hard but so flexible that the lathe tool is always being brought under it, or rather the piece rides up and over the tool. A stabilizer might help prevent this

I recently tried to turn some drumsticks out of European Yew and found it really hard to work with. It's hard wood; it has knots, but the worst part is the flexibility. It wants to flex up and over your tool. I was turning thin spindles, about 3/8 of an inch or so, and as soon as I'd get below about 3/4 it would start pulling the tool under, or rather bending over the tool head I tried a conventional roughing gouge and a very sharp carbide "easy tools" rougher, and while the easy tools rougher was better, it was still extremely hard to work, again because it really wants to flex, a lot.

The color is really nice and the wood finishes well but also for drumsticks it's just too flexible to be good. Otherwise i would have rigged up a back rest to try to control the flexing

Here in the South of England this is a fairly common tree and the timber is available but is rarely kiln dried

I don't take measures when working with it. Never used gloves or respirator but if green i always wash my hands after working with it. I only found that by the time i was working it i went to the WC A LOT of times!! O_o' since then i use always respirator when sanding or everytime there's yew dust in the air. I'm still alive, fine, and happy with my yew bow and the kayak beams i did with it.

Here in spain the yew is a very protected tree. Even if it is in your garden you have to ask the autorities before cutting a branch. There aren't almost any forests in wich you can find wild yews.

This wood is very susceptible to severe warping when dry, little changes of the humidity have warped 3" the paddle i did :(

Taxus is a rare tree, it also grows solitary, so they're difficult to find. In Italy we have some very old trees whose position is not marked in the national park's maps, and you have to request a guide to see them. They're large and impressive, with that big, hollow trunks, like those seen in horror movies, but I don't know if they're a protected specimen at all, even the young trees.

Good info, thanks. What is meant by "I went to the WC a lot"? This "WC" abbreviation is not one that I am familiar with...

Hehe i'm talking about the Water Closet or commune. I started using the respirator about the third or fourth day working with yew wood when sanding because i readed that one of the effects of being poisoned is heavy stomach ache and diarrhea. Mine was not painful at all but i felt it was not normal to go to the W.C. that oftenly...
Be careful !! This wood is deathly poisonous ;)