Just to make sure we understand each other. There's a total of two bows in the pictures, correct? And one bow has started to lift a splinter in the lower limb. Despite that splinter, you continued on shooting this bow, so the bow broke at the lower limb where this splinter was. Correct?
- As soon as a splinter lifts, you must immediately unstring the bow and solve that splinter. You must never continue shooting a bow that has any damage in it.
- The tiller in the picture "oke%20bow%20tiller.jpg" has two extremely serious hinges in it! Both limbs must bend more evenly. Esp. the left limb has a severe hinge that will almost always be fatal if not corrected. The hinges are in midlimb, with the inner limbs not doing much work. You can only correct such a hinge by removing everywhere except for the hinge itself. That means you have to scrape inner limbs and outer limbs, but leave the midlimbs alone. Only when the hinges are gone, you can continue pulling the bow further.
- The brace height of the bow "lil bow.jpg" looks really high. How long is that bow and what's the braceheight? the tiller looks much better on this bow, though!
- In the first post you mention that the wood is still drying. You should only tiller dry wood. You can rough out a wet piece of wood up to the point where it starts flexing, but tillering can only be done with properly dried wood. how dry is the wood? When was it cut?
Two general tips... Check the thickness taper of the limbs. Take a caliper and meticulously check for any high or low spots before your truly start tillering. It will make your tillering job go so much easier. Second, a longer bow is less sensitive for a slight screw-up in tiller. Bows over 70" in length can afford some more rooky mistakes than shortbows.
Good luck with your bows! Keep us posted.
