Whew!

The bow is nearly done, I took the bull by the horns and went for it.
Fully braced at about 5 3/4" I drew it to 24" very briefy, I glanced at the spring balance on the tillering rig, it read 56 pounds...
Whew, that gives me a bit of poundage to play with for final tillering. Anything over 50 pounds at 24" is a great result.
I've been smoothing the limbs with a cabinet scraper, a great tool for removing the last file and rasp marks, vastly better and quicker than sandpaper. My scraper was pretty blunt but I checked out some videos on You Tube which show sharpening methods, some are a bit fussy but some are V good.
I just went across one edge with a file and burnished over the edge using the shaft of a big screwdriver, it gave a nice sharp burred edge which takes off very fine shavings, a very worth while couple of minutes work.
A cabinet scraper is highly recommended if you havn't tried one, they are cheap and very effective.
Pics to follow over the weekend...
Update! :- made a proper string and cut down an arrow which had a broken tip down to 24" (to avoid any chance of overdrawing) Shot a couple of times in the garage, it needed a bit of adjustment to smooth and shape the arrow pass (the bit of the grip where the arrow rubs the side of the bow as it leaves the bow). It seems pretty fast, but I must admit I put a 50 grain pile on the arrow which is as light as they come. Once it's finished I'll shoot some through the chronometer to measure how fast it really is.
(They always look fast on those first few shots especially indoors!)