Tweaking a Bow

Some time back I was asked to make a pair of bows for a couple (Catherine and Brian), they wanted laminated bows with a good cast for roving at relatively low weights 35# and 50# respectively.
Well laminates aren't my thing and I wasn't keen to do it, but this couple do a lot to promote longbow archery, so I wanted to find a way to do it without having to buy fancy exotic timber. I also knew that Boo/Yew was one of the finest combinations, but for some bonkers reason Brian didn't really want a Yew belly.
A good solution dawned on me, I'd rework two of the 50# prototype flight bows I made earlier in the year and present them the bows as a gift. The 35# was Boo/Yew/Ipe and the 50# Boo/Yew, this avoided too much work for me and any embarrassment over what to charge and the fact that his bow has a Yew belly :-).
I tarted up the bows with nice leather grips, hers being red Rolls Royce upholstery leather with a mother of pearl arrow plate. I padded out the flight strings to accept regular arrows.
The bows were handed over at a rove and they were astounded by the distances they were shooting. Catherine found she had to shoot alongside the heavy bows rather than moving forward with the lighter bows, even then she was still over-shooting the marks! I suspect her bow cold probably win a 35# longbow flight contest as it shot only about 5-10 yards less than the 50#
The next week I received a very nice letter of thanks.

However, on Thursday Brian's bow reappeared in the hands of my mate JT having been sent back by Brian for a check up as he'd found it popping the string off when bracing it.
I strung it and could immediately see it had shifted a bit and was trying to bend sideways and the lower limb which had more reflex than the upper looked too strong. It dawned on me that the bow had only been shot by me maybe half a dozen times which would account for some settling.
By pushing the string loop across in the nock a tad it stayed strung ok, but I could see a slight sideways bend. A few good scrapes along the strong side of the belly eased off the excess strength and removed the tendency to bend. A bow will tend to bend towards the weak side, thus the opposite (strong) side need easing off. I scraped the "corner" between side and belly on the strong side.
It looked better, but I thought the brace height (BH) looked a bit low too, it was only about 5" and the string appeared to have almost no twist in it. Twisting it up a bit raised the BH to 5 1/2" and I decided to add the BH measurement to the writing on the back of the bow (5 1/2 - 6").
It was looking really good now and I decided to get some arrows shot through it to help it settle down...
WOW! It really smacked out the arrows (my regular field arrows) and they stuck in the target dead true in a perfectly vertical line with barely a finger width between each one. I couldn't help thinking it would make a great field bow being so fast, yet shooting clean and true.
I'll shoot it in some more and return it at the next roving shoot, being sure to demonstrate how to check the alignment, string loop position and brace height.

Out of interest, while the bow was at it's lower brace I had applied a slight sideways force and the bow did indeed give a slightly alarming kick as it twisted sideways and flicked the string off round to the back.