Slowing Down

I'm taking it really slowly on the Maple, I've got the tail end of a cold which is dragging on and making me take it easy (cough cough...).
It's also making me think and realise how we learn and re-learn.
We get better at something and speed up, get cocky and complacent and then have to get back to the tried and tested, no short cuts method.
Pride comes before a fall when making bows. Of course there are plenty of ways of cutting corners, but it can easily be the wrong one!
I've teased the bow back to about 40-45# on a 3" brace height and it's looking pretty even, very little set, no heat treatment, just painstaking work in little 15 minute burst over the last few evenings.
I'm in danger of taking so much care over the knotty upper limb that I'll neglect the lower.
I'm pretty sure the previous version had taken more set by this point as I'd adopted a strategy of...
'Go at it until it starts to set whilst exercising it to maximum draw weight, then heat treat it' .
This time it's tease it back as far as I can first at a more circumspect draw weight.

Here's a question, the nice knobbly feature on the back of the bow shows as an ordinary very sound knot on the belly. Is a knot on the belly stronger in compression than it's surrounding wood, weaker or the same?

This needs answering as, if I leave extra wood around it and it's stiffer anyway I'll have a stiff point on the limb and consequently weak points either side. If I assume it's stronger and I thin it too much maybe it will chrysal or over stress the back?

Maybe I'm being hard on myself and that first bow was getting to know the limitations of the wood, the main thing is I'm still pressing on...maybe this one will fail too, maybe I'm just asking too much of the wood and it needs to be even longer and wider (hmmm 6' long 6" wide, also can be used as a snow board, maybe there's a new product idea there, must talk to the marketing department).

I've done the heat treatment this afternoon. While it's settling down I'll start sorting through my stash of timber.
I've looked through the Hazel and started roughing out the best stave for a primitive. I'll have a shufti at the Yew once I've got the last insuation board out of the garage and screwed to the ceiling.