I haven't posted for ages, but the experiments with my Osage flight bow needed documenting for my own sanity.
The bow was originally somewhere between 70-80# shooting a 27" flight arrow (measured to the BELLY of the bow). Having overdrawn and stuck the point of an arrow into the belly a tip overlay sheared off. I repaired it, but didn't have the bottle to shoot it again.
So... I reworked it down to about 60# @26" ( I didn't want to draw it further on the tiller).
My PB had been 341 yards, and now the re-worked bow shoots 320yards (using the same arrows).
I've eased off the arrow pass and done a slight sideways correction at the arrow pass with heat (The bow was curved to the archers right away from the arrow pass).
High speed video at 1000 frames per second shows good arrow flight, and I thought adding an extended shelf to give 3" of over draw and therefore a shorter lighter more aerodynamic arrow might get it shooting further. Video shows the arrows rotating and tipping over at about 45 degrees after a few yards of flight, so there is a lot of tuning work to do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAIq9j6HsfE
Shooting with the shooting machine has it's own problems, clamping the bow too hard can cause misalignment of the string. The papier mache extended shelf shows some promise.
The other problem is arrow mass and spine, the best performing arrows seem to be about 280-300 grain, lighter was giving more speed but less distance in live trials on the field. I haven't got good speed figures using the overdraw shelf and chrono yet. Maybe the arrow isn't flying true through the chrono, I'm also not utilising the full overdraw as I'm short drawing with the machine, for fear of over stressing the wood.
Another question, is the lower limb a tad weak?