u/like_a_led_balloon

50@28”, 63 inches. This was a frustrating stave. While it was dense good quality yew it had lots of waves and twist and it took multiple repeated heating sessions fixing it to get the tips in line. All the heat correction caused a couple hairline drying checks to show up on the back, hence the rawhide backing (not structurally harmful but I just think they’re fugly). After rawhide backing and tillering, I realized it had started to develop a new twist (maybe from moisture from the rawhide?), which I couldn’t fix with heat without delaminating the backing, so I had to scrape wood on one side to try to weaken the limbs in the left right direction to bring the tip back in line and retiller. Consequently I’m not entirely happy with the tiller but after all the messing with it I rather call it done than keep tweaking with it and making it worse. The recurve tips are slightly working and bent in with dry heat. It shoots hard and fast, lots of early weight. Limbs are a little over 1.5 wide tapering to 3/8” nocks. After shooting, tips sit about 1.75 inches forward of center, from original 2.75” or so total reflex, which makes me suspect I slightly under built it, but I’m pretty happy with it overall.

Thanks for looking!

Got a couple billets from a California bowyer named Paul Rodgers. The red handled bow is the same one I was trying to troubleshoot the riser in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bowyer/comments/1up86mx/near_flawless_yewexcept_riser_issues/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1, i ended up regluing a yew riser and reshaping the faded a little and it has held so far.

Red handle is 45@28, 72” long with jatoba tip overlays and green is 43@28 and 71” long with cow horn tip overlays and a walnut handle overlay over the splice. Glued on cork arrow shelf.

The goal was to maximize comfort in shooting so i left them pretty long and flipped the tips a little, I really like the early draw weight smoothness and performance that comes from flipping the tips on a longish flatbow.

Both bows had a touch of natural deflex in one of the billets which I used as the top limb so it does look like I have a ton of positive tiller but it feels pretty balanced to draw to me. Finished with tru oil. The full draw pics are from pre-riser troubleshooting on the red bow hence different handle colors. Thanks for looking!

Hello lovely bowyer community,

Hoping any of the folks with more laminate experience might chime in.

Got this spliced stave from a retired bowyer in my area. Unfortunately this happened after I had finished tillering, shooting in, and doing a handle wrap on this yew bow. Despite being nearly twice the thickness of the limbs with longish fades, it seems the handle is bending, which caused the hickory riser piece to pop off. Honestly shocked that this is an issue as I thought it was more than thick enough but the billets the bow came from were not very big resulting in a narrow and deep handle. (The splice itself was cut about an inch and a quarter deep and a hair less than an inch wide when I got it). Riser was glued with EA40.

At this point I’m thinking of either:

- regluing a riser piece and then wrapping the area with fiberglass cloth / epoxy resin. Concerned if that will be enough or if it will just pop again

-maybe combining the first approach with a shortened riser section and even longer fades

- using a soft material like cork to build up the riser and just letting the handle bend. My concern here is that the handle is Z spliced billets, so bending scares me a little. It’s bending enough that at brace height I could just slip am x-acto blade under the riser before it popped. I did draw it to full a few times without the riser after it delaminated and the bow held fine

is there a better way to approach this?

thank you!

Roughed this out from a skinny short stave figuring it would be an interesting challenge to get to my 28” draw. It’s about a hair under 1.5” wide in the limbs. Bend thru the handle, Flipped the tips to help string angle but I’m wary of this thing being overstrained, I want to get to 45@28. At this point to prevent either breakage or serious set I’m thinking about either sinew (although I’d prefer not to as I’m impatient) or deflexing the handle gently (or both).

I’ve built a bunch of bows but never short really. Am I approaching it too conservatively?

Thanks!