Questions about my Osage selfbow.

[Bearded Mountain Man]

Good Morning PA forum,
     I am very new to this. This is my first post on the first forum I have ever been a part of. I hope it goes well.
     A few years back I had been given an Osage selfbow. I had found it in an old shed at a farm I was working at in Georgia. I am not too sure if it is considered a flat bow or a long bow as it is both flat and long. The dimensions of this bow are 68 1/4 in. Tip to Tip, 66 1/2 in. nock to nock, 1 5/8in. wide at the fade and 5/8in. wide at the tips. It is about 3/4in. thick at the end of the risers fade and is about 1/2in. thick at the tips. The bottom limb has a few beautifully pronounced knots and the entire bow has been coated with some kind of clear sealant. I haven't figured out how to upload pictures on this post yet, but here is a link to my Facebook page where I posted a few for public viewing. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151001883652426.421333.638942425&type=3&l=2ae4a1f0c2
    Okay, Now with all of the technical stuff out of the way lets get down to my questions. This bow pulls at about 76# at 28in. I am wondering if it is possible to remove some wood from the limbs to make her pull at more of a 50/55# range. I have yet to actually make a self bow that doesn't break on me so I am a bit inexperienced in what I would need to do lighten this bow.
     I suppose my other question is, should I simply leave the bow as is and see about making a trade with someone who may be looking for a bow like this one.
      Any helpful tips and advise are more than welcome. I look forward to getting to know you guys. From reading other posts on the forum it seems like you all have a good thing going here and I am glad to be a part of it.
     Thanks.
        ~Shane

[Slackbunny]

Personally I'd leave it as is, especially if you don't have much experience tillering, because that looks like an advanced tillering job. There are a couple knots in in it and they can be tricky. Plus it looks really nice as is, and whoever built it must have been happy with it.

It might be too heavy for you now, but maybe you can work up to it. If you don't think you'd ever want to pull 76# then I'd trade it for something different like you said. Its a beautiful bow and I'm sure someone would be very happy to own it.

If it were me, I'd keep it for myself.

[DarkSoul]

Welcome to Primitive Archer! However, it's afternoon on this side of the pond, not morning

That looks like a pretty rough bow that would be an excellent candidate for a refurbishing job. The handle is square, there is a lot of set located only in the inner limbs, the knots have not been properly dealt with, the tips are wide and the tiller is probably off. The problem is, the bow is already tillered to 76 pounds. That means the wood has already been stressed to 76#. Yes, you can take the drawweight down, but the wood will still be 'damaged' as if it were 76#. It's a bit like: "My V8 engine is a bit too powerful for me. Could you perhaps remove two cylinders?" It'll work, but nobody would like to do it, and the rest of the engine is still designed for the original eight cylinders. Taking the weight down a few pounds will not matter that much, but taking it down 20# is a lot. If you lower the drawweight to 55#, you may get a performance equal to that of a 50# bow.

If it were my bow, I would re-work it. Remove all the varnish, narrow the outer limbs, floortiller a bit better, clamp in slight reflex, temper the belly, retiller to 60#, re-do the handle wrap.

[blackhawk]

Id say it refurbishable and agree with everything darksoul said. But that might not be easy for someone with your experience to do tho. Either get some more experience before tackling it,or if there is a bowyer close to you who can assist and help you firsthand wood be a wise choice.

[Bearded Mountain Man]

It sounds like refurbishing it will be quite a handful. DarkSoul, I like your analogy and it does make sense to me. I think I will take SlackBunny's advice and perhaps keep it as it is. Maybe I can find someone who would like to shoot it. It is one of the prettiest bows I own and I sure do like looking at it. But I really hate owning things that I only look at. I can shoot it about a dozen times, but then I am sore for a couple days. Also the last time I shot it it split all of my self nocks. (Of course I didn't realize that until after I had shot half a dozen arrows out of it.)    Oh well.

[wildkatt]

  Ifin you realy want to trade it out for something a little easier to shoot, I like trades so give me a PM.


Katt

[Eric Krewson]

 Reworking would be a pretty tall order for a newbie.

Here is how I would do it;( this is experience talking having done this a bunch of times before).

Build a reflexed caul, heat the limbs really hot(just short of scorching them) with a heat gun and take all the set out of them.

Start at square one, floor tiller, start on the long long string and finally go to the short string as you bring the poundage down slowly as you increase the draw length. Use a tillering gizmo for this process.

I have never had a bow fail after I "corrected" it.

[tom sawyer]

If it were me I'd hang that one up, admire it regularly, and build another.

I'd suggest that you shorten your handle and fades, 4" grip and 1-2" fades is enough.  The rest of that riser area is kind of wasted, it could have been working wood that helped reduce set.  You want 28" of working limb for a 28" draw but for a 70lb bow you might even need more.  The rest of your dimensions are fine.

I would have put the knotty limb on top.  The lower limb is under slightly more stress than the upper, so I try and have my best limb as my lower limb.

Edited to add:  Sorry, didn't see that this was a bow you found and didn't make yourself.  Poor reading skills and ADD on top of that is my excuse.

[George Tsoukalas]

Oh my. Mountain Man, it is your bow so you'll have to decide but here are my thoughts. Leave it or send it to someone who builds them. Perhaps after 2 doz bows you could handle that stave. Is it signed? I'd be interested to know who made it. That bow was made by an expert. I can tell by the way the knots were handled. Besides a beginner probably would not have made that stave into a bow. Not that I am an expert. But I gave an osage bow to a friend who is a trad shooter. He told me he could improve the bow by doing this and that. I told him not to do it. He did anyway. It broke. I won't give him another one.
Dark Soul, I have no idea how many bows I've built from other woods and how many from osage probably (2-300 total?) and I've broken 1/2 those over the course of 23 years of making and breaking though I've slowed down as I've aged. I like my handles flat. The tiller may appear "off" because of the knots and other imperfections which really should not bend as much as the rest of the limb anyway. Character bows are not supposed to look like fiberglass bows which seems to be the rage these days. Jawge

[DarkSoul]

George, I agree that this is not an easy project for a beginner. Chance of failure is probably higher than the chance of success.

The shape of the handle is  a lot of personal preference. For me, the handle of this osage bow appeares to have pretty square corners. Since the handle is stiff anyway, there is  plenty of room to round those corners more - if the archer desires to do so.
I agree that the bow has been made by someone who knew what he was doing. We could debate if it's made by an expert, but that's irrelevant in this situation. I can see most knots have indeed been properly handled, although that big knot in the lower limb is over-compensated for, as far as I'm concerned. There appears to be too much wood around it and even the back has extra rings of wood. Not needed, IMHO.
Furthermore, I comment on the tiller because of the set it has taken. All the set this bow has taken (which is quite a bit!) is located near the handle. There is no set midlimb whatsoever. This - to me- indicates a poor tiller with probably too much bend near the handle and too little in the midlimbs. However, without seeing a full draw pic, we are just second guessing.

[Bearded Mountain Man]

Thanks guys.
        I really wasn't expecting so many responses. I think that since I am a beginner at this that I will hold off on trying to refurbish or tweak this bow. I may be interested in a trade if I can find the right bow to trade for. Maybe I will take it up to the next trad. archery shoot I go to and see if anybody is interested.
          Thanks again guys!

[JW_Halverson]

Until I can get a look at that bow in stave form and then at floor tiller stage, I will hold off on claiming it has taken set.  Staves, from time to time, come with deflex.  A friend of mine actually prefers deflex in his staves, claims they take no set and shoot the sweetest. 

Just throwing in my two cents worth, but I'd leave her as is.  Maybe some day you will want to shoot a heavy bow, or maybe it can just hang on the wall as part of a growing collection!