Tillering Osage/Incremental Stress Question

[PeteDavis]

I am putting together an osage/hickory LB. 70" right now, 1 3/8 at fades to 7/16 at tips.

I have successfully ground in my width tapers and scraped them clean and they look good. I have also ground a tentative thickness taper into the belly and my limbs are now floor tillering well.

Isn't it a good idea to tiller slowly, pull the bow slightly into the draw to help the wood to memorize the bend? I may just gently floor tiller this bow for a few days, but it's ready to low brace and pull an inch or two.

Slow is better eh?

By the way thanks Pat. Your tapers are great. My thickness is 3/4 at the handle to 5/8 at the tips and I plan to go SLOW from here.

Also, are some minor tip overlays (1/8, osage) going to slow me enough to worry about? I have a few small scraps left over from the core stave.

PD

[FlintWalker]

Pete, slower is good (unless you're driving in Florida. They'll run you over!)
 The important thing is to never pull it beyond the point in which you can see a problem or you reach your desired draw weight. I always excercise the limbs for 20 or so times any time I remove wood (even more as I get closer to final tiller)
 Also, don't mess around with a long string too much. That's a good recipe for coming in too light. Once you have the limbs floor tillered well and bending to the point of a low brace...brace it.
 BTW, you'll never notice those overlays

[PeteDavis]

Thanks Shannon. Good advice.

In other matters I call you

"Master of the Pine Tree".

PD

[Pat B]

Pete, I agree with Shannon. Get it to low brace and brace it at 3" (mol). Be sure everything is even and together first though.   Once you get a bow to bend well at brace it is only a small bit of wood removal to his your target weight. Go slowly but like Shannon said exercise it after each wood removal. Once I brace a bow and everything is good I like to let it stay braced(sweating) for a while. Thirty minutes at first then as the tillering progresses even longer until final tiller and a 4 to 6 hour sweating. When the final tillering is done the only weight you will loose is with rounding the corners and final sanding which is usually 1# to 3#. The "sweating" is like "shooting it in" as we used to do. Generally at this point my bow's draw weight doesn't change much. It was shot in as I tillered.
  Tip overlays add very little weight to the limb tips and the width of the tips can be reduced to eliminate that small bit of added physical weight.
   Pete, you will be amazed how accurate this bow will shoot. If you use a properly spined arrow your first shot will be right where you are looking.

[Pappy]

I do about like Shanon and Pat,works pretty good for me.
   Pappy