Monday 4 March 2019

Boo Yew Warbow Fiddling and Fettling

The tiller was looking a bit ugly (top pic) and I noticed the bow was trying to twist and turn sideways just a tad such that the back wasn't sitting flat, but was angled to one side.
There are ways to fix this sort of thing. A bow will try to bend towards the weaker side, so just rounding off the other edge can help, as can shifting the nocks across. My previous go on the tiller pulling to 100# at about 29" (top pic) indicated that it would be a whisker over 110# at 32", but in order to improve the tiller I might lose a few pounds.
I decided it was time to fit the horn nocks, and to take a little off each tip, about 1" off the top and 1/2" off the bottom. Taking a little off raises the draw weight a few pounds and also moves the nock down to a slightly wider area of the limb where there is room to shift it sideways by say 1/8" - 3/16" which will counteract the tendency to bend sideways.
I got that done and slimmed the tips, blending them in to the new nock position. The bow seemed better proportioned and the sideways bend had gone. The draw weight was up a tad too, so, after some more fiddling and fettling, like taking the nodes of the bamboo down a whisker and checking for thick areas using the verniers (of course there is a tendency for the nodes to create a thick spot) and generally taking out tool marks etc it was back onto the tiller for a video.
Video here:-
having reviewed the video I did a bit more then took it to just over 110# and that was about 31" which is pretty much done, maybe a few scrapes here and there.
The pics show before the horn nock fitting and after. I don't know if you can see the difference, it's pretty subtle, maybe if you click on the pics and flip between them. The kink in the right limb is rather distracting, but I'm loathe to try and get it flexing any more as there is knot, a filled knot and some weird swirls of grain there, which could possibly decide to form a pinch if I try to be too clever.

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