I've been messing about with odds and ends. I didn't want to start on a new bow until after my big trip so I've been refurbishing my trusty old Yew longbow, the first I ever made. It's had huge abuse over the years being only 70" long, yet drawn to 32". I've been toying with doing the re-furb' for ages as the bow wasn't being used.
I'm taking out the set (3" from belly to a straight line tip to tip... like a 3" brace height when unstrung) using both steam and dry heat. I'm heat treating the belly and adding a belly patch where there was a knot and a rather thin heartwood area. I'm applying what I've learned over the 30 odd years since I made it and I'll be re-tillering it.
I've also spliced two skinny triangular section off-cuts of Ash to make a backwards bow, this will just be a quick play/experiment. The wider bark side will be the belly of the bow and the narrow point of the V cross section will be flattened to follow a growth ring and will be the back. So it will be narrow back wide belly or "trapped" as it's called (short for trapezoid cross section) The tillering will be done by removing wood from the belly which will then be heat treated. I don't know if it will work as it may be too narrow to be stable and the back may snap. It's just an experiment so I don't mind failure.
I went up the club today, shot 18 3D targets with the Monkey bow scoring 224 which is ok for a course I hadn't shot before with a bow I'd only used at 10 yards.
Popped along to medieval corner to see how the re-tillered Austrian Yew bow shot. It was chucking arrows a prodigious distance and the tiller looked good.
I can pack my bows, arrows, quiver etc away for the trip now.
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