Near as Dammit!

I'd done some fiddling and fettling going over the belly with a cabinet scraper and blended in/narrowed the tips some more, which I was hoping had got it nearly back to 28"
I made a decent string last night and gave it a go this evening. (A great antidote to a day in front of a computer).
I warmed up on the spliced Yew, then my trust old 70 pounder.
Dunno if I got a full 28" draw and it was hard work but it gave the bow some exercise and stretched in the string, mind with AstroFlite it doesn't stretch much, the brace height only dropped about 1/4"
I'd only shot 3 arrows, but it's a wise man who knows when to quit.
I then got it on the scale and there it was 80# at 28".
Excellent!The last couple of inches of draw to reach 30" won't need much material removed as the bow will be setting in. It will mostly be shooting it in to get 100 arrows through it and fussing over it with the cabinet scraper and sanding it.

I've been chatting with my mate JT on E-mail who explodes a fair few warbows and it dawned on me that one problem may be that they are often not really shot in before being handed over.
He had one that lost a huge amount of draw weight and took some set, despite apearing to be perfectly tillered and superb wood... just shows you can't tell how a bow will perform.
I made him a 130# Yew bow a while back and he's slowly worked into it and is now back to a full 32". He's noticed a few little pinches at pin knots on the belly and he's going to bring it over for me to have a look.
Effectively he's taken a year to get it shot in and hopefully it's just slowly settled into full draw as indeed has he!
It begs the question what was the life of a warbow in medieval times? I won't be daft enough to even hazard a guess... there are plenty of 'armchair experts' to do that.
Mind they had a good supply of Yew and very experienced bowyers, still they must have had a few go bang at inopportune moments...
Maybe in battle the cry of "BOW" would bring a lad scurrying along the line with a replacement... who knows?