Hazel Try Out

I tried the Hazel for distance, it was a tad disappointing, but I think the mistakes in the bow are showing up.
It made 193 yards but should probably have gone much further with the speed figures I'd obtained.
I only tried a couple of shots and didn't get a very good loose, it was also rather windy... but that's not the main thing.
I'd been miss measuring draw weight and length. I should measure draw length to the point where the point of the arrow would fall off the shelf and onto my hand. Now that is further than I'd normally draw as with a longbow you draw to the back of the bow, with the flight bow shaped grip, it's actually right up to the belly side of the grip. (My tiller rig rule was adjusted to suit longbows)

Anyhow, the upshot is the bow was actually drawing about 40# at 28" and putting more strain on the limbs than the Hazel bow I'd modelled it on. The result was there was virtually no string tension at brace. Maybe the 190 odd fps I got through the chrono was actually putting set into the bow.
So... I've taken some off the belly using the belt sander. It's V easy as the bow is tillered already and the belly is dead flat. I've got it to about 32# at 28". I can now try and heat treat/bend some of the reflex back into it.
This experiment will be fairly quick to do and I'm hoping that by taking off weight I'll actually end up with a faster bow. I've also narrowed the tips more, loosing some physical weight.

You can see I've done one limb. I took more care jigging it up for heat treating, made sure it got plenty of heat and took the tip right down to the end of the former, to give more bend,. Hopefully some of the reflex will stay in. In the first pic you can just see the limb is much darker just it is heat treated near where it meets the grip.

The good news is the laser rangefinder was V good. I took a sheet of thin steel plate (from the back of an old electric cooker) and propped it up on the shooting line. I could then sight back to it from the arrow and get a good consistent reading.
One of the guys on Primitive Archer suggested I should be getting nearer 250yards with that arrow speed.
So, game on, I'll see what I can achieve. It's all a good learning exercise.