Thursday 11 August 2011

Osage on the Tiller

It's at a low brace now (3-4") and I've got it on the tiller, it's been drawn back to 30 pounds in the pic. Tricky to work in the garage with a bear in there!
Up to this point I've been getting the limbs about even by measuring the thickness at 6" intervals to make sure they are roughly even and slowly tapering towards the tips. Now it's on the tiller I will do it more by eye and feel. Measurements are very handy but its dangerous to try and do it all by numbers, you need to be constantly looking at it and feeling it. Even a relatively even stave will have wiggles and twists which will be appreciated best by running the limb between finger and thumb. You can't always measure the limb easilly when it has curved surfaces. Even though this bow has almost rectangular cross section there is still a curve on the back and some twist which can make measurement tricky or deceptive.
I did add a thin sliver of Osage (Just about 1 growth ring thick) to the belly of the recurve where it was kinked, this may well get rasped off as the bow progresses, but I wanted to keep the recurved tips stiff and didn't want to risk pulling out the curve as I tillered it.
the tips have been left pretty wide too, this will give me room to adjust the alignment of the string so it runs nicely up the centre of the recurve whilst sitting right at the handle too.

Oh, and the bear? He's a 3D target which I brought back from the club to remove a length of steel bar which had got jammed in his mounting tubes. There are two steel tubes which run up into the foam which allow the target to be fixed firmly to the ground by hammering steel rods into the ground and then putting the target onto them. Somehow a rod had got pushed right up inside.

UPDATE:- I've been tillering it off and on all day, it's now up to a full brace and 45 pounds at 25".
I'm aiming for 45# @ 28" so there's a little way to go yet The recurved tips are still thick, but are becoming narrower and narrower as I'm adjusting how the string sits, the limbs are being narrowed and trued up too so that now it's hard to tell the chunky fat limb from the skinny one which had barely enough wood. As it's getting close, I'm also rounding off the square edges a fair bit and being more careful with the finish. I'm hoping to shoot it on Saturday at the club to give it a good try out. It's shot an arrow, just a quick plink from a short draw but it works, I've still got the adjustable tillering string on it. It feels very taut and lively, there is very little set and the recurves are remaining stiff as it's drawn (static recurve as opposed to working recurves)

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