He turned up with a bow he'd been working on, a couple of Yew logs and some of his Grandfathers tools including a really nice old drawknife.
He had a great idea of the basics but was just missing a few bits of knowledge, we got a string onto his bow and put it on the tiller. It wasn't the best bit of Yew but he'd made a fine job considering. It was a shortish flat bow and it came back to bracing height ok, so we shortened the string, got it braced and pulled it back enough to see how it was working.
He was aiming for about 40 pounds and I think we took it back to about 30.
I was most impressed, as it came back nice and evenly, the centre section wasn't working much, and the handle was a bit long, but it certainly looked to be on the right track.
We covered a huge amount of stuff from and he seemed to pick up everything really quickly. We had a go with the Chinese repeater too and a couple of my bows.
I had another contact from a guy asking if I was interested in making a kid's bow, I said I don't like doing low draw weight bows, but I had the Hazel bow which he could see on this blog, which might do nicely if cut down and re tillered. 
I sawed about 5.5" off each end and worked it down to about 30 lb at 24". I was aiming at 20-25 pounds at 22-24". By the time it's all finished it will be about right. It's just about finished and looking very handsome, the tiller is now much more even and I've done Waterbuffalo horn tip overlays and arrow plate.
I'll post some pics when it's completely done. It's good that the bow will find a home and I'm sure it will get a lot of use. Re-working it was interesting as I could really see how far the heat treatment had penetrated on the lower limb tip where I over did it. Re-tillering also gave me a second shot at getting the twist out.
The couple of fine chrysals are still visible, but they are nearer the tip now and far less stressed with the reduced draw weight.
I sawed about 5.5" off each end and worked it down to about 30 lb at 24". I was aiming at 20-25 pounds at 22-24". By the time it's all finished it will be about right. It's just about finished and looking very handsome, the tiller is now much more even and I've done Waterbuffalo horn tip overlays and arrow plate.
I'll post some pics when it's completely done. It's good that the bow will find a home and I'm sure it will get a lot of use. Re-working it was interesting as I could really see how far the heat treatment had penetrated on the lower limb tip where I over did it. Re-tillering also gave me a second shot at getting the twist out.
The couple of fine chrysals are still visible, but they are nearer the tip now and far less stressed with the reduced draw weight.
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