It shot further than Mick's Hilary Greenland, but only by about 5-10 yards, dropping arrows round about 180 yard clout mark, so it wasn't worth him having it.
I was happy to keep the bow for myself and I tried it with my 'standard' arrows at a full 28" draw. The extra couple of inches draw made a spectacular difference, adding about 50 yards!! One of Mick's lighter clout arrows with trimmed fletchings and a barrelled shaft went right to the edge of the field which is reckoned to be about 240 yards. It's interesting to watch others shooting as I reckon Mick tended to shoot a tad low, whereas I was going a bit high, some of my arrows were dropping in almost vertical. Some of the other guys were there and I had a go with one the Transatlantic bow I made a while back, it's taken a whisker of set and dropped a few pounds but was still chucking full weight medieval arrows past the 180 yard mark. I found the weight was no prob (it's about 80# ish at 32" from what I recall) but I struggled actually getting the full length of draw.
Twister 2 is very nearly there. Getting from 50# at 22" to 50# at 26" doesn't take a lot of actual wood removal, but it certainly takes a lot of care! I think it's this point where a lot of people new to making bows probably get carried away. Just taking the bracing height up the final inch seemed to make a huge difference to the tiller, possibly not obvious to the casual observer, but I'd been slowly getting the tips of the limbs moving a bit more and suddenly it was obvious they were working. Stepping back I could see the tips were now about right and it just needed the mid and inner limbs easing off a bit. I'm no longer using the rasp, it's just my freshly sharpened scraper. Some extra work narrowing the tips and and doing the bottom nock has got it really close... lunchtime now.
Blimey! The door bell rang, I'd forgotten a guy was coming to visit with a big 1/4 Yew log which he wants turning into a bow! We had a great few hours trying the bows and chatting about archery and all sorts. He's keen to try his hand at making a bow, but felt the Yew was best left to an experienced hand. I offered some advice and said I'd post some pics of the shave horse as he fancied making one to help with the bow making. He had a go on mine and felt the difference between Yew heart & sap wood and also Ash and Hazel. I'll post some pics as a separate blog entry. This will do for now, I may do a bit more on twister2 this evening, but right now, I'm ready for a 10 minute cat nap.
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