Shooting In

Feeling brighter today, shaking off this cold. A nice parcel from D G Quicks turned up this afternoon with some more string making material.
I've just finished making the string for the Yew bow, and shot 40 arrows with it (my grouping was getting better by the last 5). I also over drew it about an inch with one of my longer arrows as a safety check, I'll do it again on the tiller to 29" at some point just to prove the point, but being Yew it would probably take 30... I'm just not going to push my luck that far!
The danger of overdrawing is one reason I make continuous loop strings rather than the traditional longbow string with a knot at one end which can be adjusted to give too high a bracing height. I also caution people to only use the right length arrow and to only let other people try the bow with the correct arrow. You see some people shooting full length 32" shafts and to draw full length with one of those could be fatal to a bow (especially one of by little Hazel flat bows), I like to let people shoot my bows, but only with appropriate arrows.
After the 40 shots I put it straight up on the tiller to check the draw weight, it was spot on the 40pound target weight. Whew there's a relief as it's easy to end up 5 pound under, I'd slimmed down the tips slightly to fit the horn nocks and it's nice to see that it didn't drop any draw weight.
It's basically all done now apart from fine finishing detail and some more shooting in, it certainly does look handsome.
I haven't shot it through the chronometer yet but it feels pretty quick and I shall do that at some point.
I'll wait until its completely finished before posting more pics, which will probably be in a week.