Sunday, 23 February 2014

Spliced Bow Early Tiller

I've been panicking a bit. The jump from making a 100# bow to making a 40-45# is HUGE and they feel so totally different.
I was feeling that I was running out of wood and it was flopping around like bit of wet spaghetti. My tiller rig gives a 2:1 advantage when pulling the rope which adds to the illusion.
On the plus side, the second heat treatment has done the job and I've got the limb alignment nice now. The tiller was horrible and I've been working hard to even it up. One problem is the wood isn't from matched billets and the the left limb has more sapwood, not to mention the recurve which makes the outer of the left limb appear extra stiff.
The left limb had a weak point on the inner third, not quite a hinge, but enough to make me sweat. I should really have taken a picture, but I wasn't going to let it sit there with the weak area under pressure.
Anyhow I'm slowly reducing the asymmetry, but it's still plain to see. In the picture it's on a low brace at 40# and 21". You can see I have some draw length to play with still, so hopefully it should get there. I also have a reasonable length of bow so I can always loose an inch of each end if I need an extra whisker of draw weight (no that an inch of each end will gain much).
Basically it's a matter of working down the whole right limb and the outer half of the left.
Now the string line is better I can exercise the bow and start to reduce the width near the tips, that will help to get them moving . Note the pic is low res' as it is grabbed from video.
Update:- I've spent another half hour on it and the tiller is looking better, it's also feeling like a bow as I've drawn it as an actual bow rather than on the tiller to prob' about 25"

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