Hickory bow, sinew back

[tronman]

how long are your non-bending tips. from the initial pics it looks your bow might have a little reflex/deflex going on. but it might be my eyes being a little foggy this morning. abd has build along for a holmegaard bow you should check it out becuase he goes over how to tiller a bow, like yours, it might be helpful. In my opinion your tiller for a holmegaard/mollegabet style bow is not that far off. But I am not an expert and this just my opinion. I like the look of your bow.

[Ryano]

That bow is following the string horribly... IMO you need more working limb than what you have going there, especially with hickory. Are you sure the wood is absolutely dry? I know the outer limbs are supposed to be stiff with this design but I'd still get them bending more out towards those levers.

[1776J]

Jason, when you go with the reflexed or recurves tips you add extra strain inner limbs. You have to preplan for that. A semi-pryamidal limb design or greater belly taper would have accomplished this IMO.

Something much more than this shape then?....

Your drawn profile reflects a more pyramid limb design (circular) where as your rectangular limb design should show an elliptical shape. By doing some side tapering from fades to mid-limb will allow more bending mid-limb.

So, you're saying I should go ahead and taper the sides more then to get a more pyramidal limb design then?  Just want to make sure before I make any move on it.

[1776J]

how long are your non-bending tips. from the initial pics it looks your bow might have a little reflex/deflex going on. but it might be my eyes being a little foggy this morning. abd has build along for a holmegaard bow you should check it out becuase he goes over how to tiller a bow, like yours, it might be helpful. In my opinion your tiller for a holmegaard/mollegabet style bow is not that far off. But I am not an expert and this just my opinion. I like the look of your bow.

Non-bending tip length is approx. 8.5"
Iniitially, yes, it did have some reflex/deflex,.... the reflex in the tips has pulled out quite a bit from where it started out at.

I'll see if I can find that topic you speak of on the holmegaard/mollegabet bow....
thank you.

[1776J]

That bow is following the string horribly... IMO you need more working limb than what you have going there, especially with hickory. Are you sure the wood is absolutely dry? I know the outer limbs are supposed to be stiff with this design but I'd still get them bending more out towards those levers.

It's certainly dry as my house has been very dry lately with the cold weather outside and the heat being on so much.

As far as getting the tips to bend more, that was actually one of my questions on an earlier post I made (about three posts ago I think?)  No one had addressed it as of yet.

"I know they are a little long,... should I thin out the tip areas a little more where they start to turn up into their slight reflex and a little past that, making that area flex a little more???"

I was thinking along those lines to simply take the tips at where they are and shorten the non-bending area up thus continuing the thickness of the belly from approx. mid-limb
outward towards each tip, over the bend of where it's reflexed, leaving more like 4-5" of non-bending tip instead?

What do we think fellas?

[artcher1]

Jason, once you get more bending mid-limb then those tips of your won't be/look so non-bending. Right now the outer half of your limbs looks so long is because the limbs' bending radius is too short for your rectangular limb design.

Looking at the front profile of your bow that you just put up shows that you do need to get the middle of your limbs working more. You can apply a great belly taper from fade to mid-limb make this happen.  Probably any side tapering at this point will result in unmatched front/braced profile (elliptical tiller for rectangular limb shape/circular tiller for pyramid limb shape).

You can remove a lot of that set by heat treating your limbs into reflex. Then sinew it's back to help hold reflexed profile........Art

[1776J]

Jason, once you get more bending mid-limb then those tips of your won't be/look so non-bending. Right now the outer half of your limbs looks so long is because the limbs' bending radius is too short for your rectangular limb design.

Looking at the front profile of your bow that you just put up shows that you do need to get the middle of your limbs working more. You can apply a great belly taper from fade to mid-limb make this happen.  Probably any side tapering at this point will result in unmatched front/braced profile (elliptical tiller for rectangular limb shape/circular tiller for pyramid limb shape).

You can remove a lot of that set by heat treating your limbs into reflex. Then sinew it's back to help hold reflexed profile........Art

Ok,...
I'm going to tackle it now then.
I'll start tapering it out to the tip from the belly so I can get that to bend more.
I'll reduce the "nonbending" tips from the 8.5" length to approx 4-5" of nonbending tip.

[1776J]

After some more tillering this evening....working out the tips a bit so they'll give some.



Really looks like top limb just isn't bending correctly!  Near hinging!! ugh!!

[1776J]

Just got down to re-bending the tips this evening.  So far so good.
I'm leaving just over 4" of stiff limb, (about 4"-4 1/8").

We'll see how this works out after they cool off and set themselves into place?

[1776J]

After the evening's tip bending....
Got some reflex back into the ends.

Whatcha think fellas?.... move to sinewing the back now so I don't end up with the flex getting pulled out?

[Stoker]

Looking good coming along very nicely.
Thanks Leroy

[1776J]

Hmmm,...

Well, this is odd,...

I decided to string the bow to see how things have set up thus far after the sinew and it appears that the top limb now bends much more which throws the tiller off by about 3/4" of an inch!

I'll post photos.

I'm guessing the remedy will simply be,...
re-tiller the stiffer limb?

This is what I'm talkin about....(see string in relation to limbs.  String runs uphill from right to left as the left limb in photo is lower in photo.)

[artcher1]

How long has it bend since you sinewed your bow?

If your tiller was fine before sinewing then it stands to reason you applied more sinew to one limb over the other. Tiller (file/scrap/sand) the sinew on the one limb and not the bow itself.

But first, stretch your bow a bit just to make sure tiller has really changed. Apply more pressure to the stiffer limb to work it a bit.........Art

[1776J]

It's only been, what?.... four days I think since I applied the sinew???

As to your recommendations..... I'll go the suggested route....
Much appreciated.

I know it seemed to take on a similar look "before" I applied sinew but not as bad as what I'm seeing now.
Was thinking it was just me!   I know that shorter limb was certainly much stiffer throughout the bow build, so it stands to reason that along with the wood being stiffer
in that limb, the sinew just exaggerated that fact.

Having said that, I'll hit the sinew little by little and see where that takes me.

[1776J]

I hit the sinew on that limb with sanding,....and with pretty much no positive outcome by doing so.  I just kept working it little by little.
No changes though.
The limb did not bend anymore than before. 

Upon examining the limbs, I decided that the one simply not bending was just to thick in comparison
to the other.

I thinned that stiff limb out.  It bends very nicenow, but now the other limb does not bend as much....
One has a nice curve, the other doesn't!!
However!!.... the funny thing is, that at least NOW that string runs parallel from tip to tip unlike before!!??

Sooooo......
I'm figuring, back to the rasp, sand paper and scraper on the limb not bending so well.

I now have this hickory bow and an osage recurve I'm working on...
"trying" to work on that is!...haha