The first yoke beam.....attempt

When my friend Ron looked at the piece of 4" x 4" Ash I had purchased for my first calf yoke he was less then complimentary. It had a big black knot in one end, some spalted nasty looking stuff and two checks, one that looked rather ominous AND to top it all, it was, according to Ron, wildly overpriced. I just hadn't bothered to look properly when I bought it. But as Ron pointed out, I'll be a bit wiser next time I go to buy wood. I guess I just trusted the fact that this wood merchants advertised themselves as Stourbridge's oldest - over 200 years - but as I found out that's no gaurantee of quality (although they can't have stayed in business for this long selling this sort of stuff!)
So I made some templates and marked the wood up. Then we drilled the bow holes using a spade bit held in a cordless drill with Ron eyeing up to keep things level - sort of. A couple of the holes went a bit off, although we drilled from both sides so the mistakes are inside but it's number 2 lesson in how not to do it! Ron helped me to make cuts up to the outline with a bow saw. Then the project kind of stalled due to teaching responsibilities until today when some blessed space was given by a snowy day that brought the outside world to halt!
So I removed all the excess wood and tidied it up with chisel, gouge and a surform which did a wonderful job of grating away the wood but it was quite slow, and for a large yoke would be too slow I imagine.
I then started shaping the neck seats with a combination of surform and spoke shave which seemed quite effective. But that big old split came back to haunt me because it's right in the middle of one of the neck seats and needs some work doing to make it good.
Well, let's see what tomorrow brings, if the road's stay icey I may get to do the other neck seat and treat that split and make the bows (I'm just using blue plastic pipe for this little one, like how those chaps on the 'Rural Heritage - making Ox yokes DVD' do it - http://www.ruralheritage.com/bookstore/catalog_group.cgi?subcategory=o ).  Will post a picture when it's complete.
By the way, the calves are getting more used to the idea of being haltered. Have been tying them up for an hour after feeding and today they didn't seem to tug and fight much at all. When the snow melts I'll take them out and start walking them on the halter.