Thursday 16 February 2012

Getting Close

I've been teasing away at the 55# Yew Longbow. It's at a reasonable brace height and pulling 55# at 22" at the moment.
The feature knot protruding through the back has been carfully worked down so that it's not too stiff or heavy, it still protrudes.
The bow is feeling light and lithe now, I can get the string off it now without the stringer, but cant' quite get it without it yet.
There's plenty of early tension in the bow, it's taken a just a whisker of set such that if I lie the belly of the bow against a straight edge I can just about get my little finger under the handle.
The last bit of tillering will probably pull a little more set into the bow, one or two fingers worth is pretty good.
There are some nice swoops and bends in the bow which make it interesting, they can be rather off putting in the tillering process and it's sometims easy to confuse the natural curves with weak points or stiff points.
I expect to get it back to 28" and be shooting it in over the weekend, but these last few inches need to be done carefully to spread the load nice and evenly along the whole bow.
On some of the forums I read people say they tillered a bow in an hour. Yes it can be done, (I've made a Hazel bow in hour flat) but I like to take it slowly and savour it. It can be nerve wracking winching on those last few inches.

Update:- A few minutes with a rasp and it's back to 55# at 24" the upper limb is a tad stiff but it's creeping back slowly. You can see that in comparison to the previous post it's flexing much harder now. As it's a fairly short bow the end result should be an impressive curve.

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