Hazel Warbow back to 25"

Much of the bark has popped off and I've been improving the tiller and adjusting the width a bit to counter any twist and sideways bend near the tips. It's looking much better and being a heavy bow with a fairly wide cross section it seems less liable to twist and go sideways.

The heat treating has stiffened it up a bit, I can feel the wood being much firmer, crisper and drier as I rasp it, it smells toasted too. The very outer surface is slightly oily where I brushed Sunflower oil over the belly while I was heat treating it.

I measured the limb thickness every 6" to pick out any thick spots. With a twisty undulating stave it's good to check, the eye and fingers are very good, but twists can give optical illusions or areas that look thin one side but are thick on the other. It was pretty good, but there was one point on each limb where I took a bit off to even up the thickness taper.

It's damn scary pulling it back on the tiller as some of the remaining bark near the grip is now beginning to crack and pop. The tiller is much improved, and it's only lack of bottle that made me quit at 80# 25" No point rushing it and risking not spotting a potential hinge or problem area.

If we do some quick sums to see how the draw weight interpolates to 28" and 32"

80# at 25". Call it a 5" brace, gives us 80# over 20" of power stroke which is 4# per inch.

So the extra 3" to get from 25" to 28" will add 12# which gives 92# @ 28"

The extra 7" to get from 25" to 32" will add and extra 28# which gives us 108#

This accounts for why I can't draw it! Although it is slowly getting easier to string (using a stringer of course)

The pic of the back of the bow shows where I've removed some wood from the back along the right edge for about 1/2 the length of the limb at the bottom of the pic'. This isn't ideal as I wanted a pristine untouched back, it was necessary because of the big twist in the limb.
As always it's about pragmatism and compromise, you have to work with what you have.

It's mid day now, plenty of time to get it coming back a bit further, or to have it explode on me!

Update:- I've had it back to about 85-90# at about 29-30" at a decent brace height. I can't be more precise as I didn't have the camera on and I wasn't going to hang about. All a bit nervy, it's at the stage now where I've put enough work in that I really don't want it to explode.