I've been doing bits and pieces, a lady contacted me via Facebook, someone had suggested I could do what was required. She'd been given a gents bow which she liked but it had a big fat grip and inch markings painted on the back. She wanted a slimmer grip and it tidied up, she brought it over and I had a look, the tiller was a whisker off (lower limb weak), it had taken a bit of set and was generally tired. the grip had a brocade cover which I cut off revealing some wooden strips which had been glued on to bulk it out. I let her shoot some of my bows including the Chinese Repeating Crossbow and a little Hazel primitive. She even tried Twister which she could manage due to her having a short draw (24" if I recall correctly).
A week later I'd taken 1" off the lower limb and re-nocked it with a smaller tidier horn nock. I slimmed down the top nock a tad, but left its interesting shape. I did a new grip in black suede with a bit of padding under the back to round it a little and generally cleaned, sanded, tidied and refinished it. She was delighted with what I'd done and insisted on giving me a few quid and a couple of bottles of wine.
The next adjustment was taking between 5 and 10# off a boo backed yew I'd made for one of the guys at the club, I took a decent 5# off but didn't clean/sand it so he could try it out last Sunday. He managed it ok but felt a little more off would be good. A light rasp and then scraping has taken off another 2# so i reckon that should do it.
Meanwhile I invested in an Airshield Pro ventilated helmet/mask as I think the Yew dust was really irritating my respiratory tract, I'd been coughing a lot and it was effecting my sleep. The mask really seems to have helped, the cough has gone and I'm sleeping well.
It was a little uncomfortable so I've done a couple of modifications! I've padded the strap that contacts the back of the head (the top and front straps are already padded) and I've converted it to use an old camera battery (Lithium ion) which is much lighter for the same energy 20gram vs 200gram ! (The battery that cam with it was Nimh).
If it is comfortable and convenient to use, it will get used all the time, otherwise it's too easy to think "I'll just be doing a couple of minutes work, I won't bother with the mask"... then an hour and half later you've inhaled a load of yew dust.
Another good point is that it doesn't fog up like my glasses did when using my old mask. There are some reflections off the visor, but once focusing on your work it's not noticeable.
I made a video showing what I did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auYmniMP_hU
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