a little advice from mbg...

[michbowguy]

alot of people are wanting to try to get more and more to the center of the handle and to centerline.
remember fellas, if you arent making great bows yet, why push the limits any further than need be. this will make you very upset when you either didnt line the tips up perfectly,and or limbs wanting to twist!
remember: archers paradox will work WITH a bow with flaws.
id rather mess with a lighter spined arrow than shoot a bow that is not accurate,not stable, or down right dangerous!

try to keep it simple.
lots of inspiring bowmakers see all these complex designs,and reflexed bows/composite bows and bows so short they seem to defy the laws of bending bow woods.

i for one made this mistake early on and i soon started to come around to building consistantly good "simple bows".
when you can consistantly push out good bows then go on to try other styles.

BELIEVE ME, when i see these awesome bows out there people are making it makes the little [and i realy mean little ..lol] gears in my head just spin!

try building some simple slightly bendy handle mid long bows, then shorter and then try to flip the tips for performance and so on.

dont let someone else tell you to keep a stiff riser because of hand shock. stiff handles means more work, like keeping the bending of the limbs more perfect as to the added stress on less of the working limbs,keeping the bow handle at close to perfect dimensions for good flight in terms of tip allignment, plus if you did not forget to add length to the top limb to compensate for the 1above,2 below standard grip! and the list goes on.
all this needs to be either executed near perfectly or all these can add up to the slow destruction of your soon to be bow.
build one for youself and find out on your own.

this is only MY way,and everyone you talk with will have THEIR way.

i will give you some good advice.

START WITH A BOW THAT IS AS TALL AS YOU ARE.
HAVE A GAME PLAN, YOU CANT PUT WOOD BACK ON THE BOW.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK,AS YOU ARE READING THIS...IT IS OBVIOUS YOU HAVE ACCES TO THIS SITE AND THE WEB, LOOK AT SIMPLE BOW DESIGNS AND SHAPE YOUR BOW.
GO SLOW,YOU CANT PUT WOOD BACK ON THE BOW!
DONT TRY TO MESS WITH SHAPING THE HANDLE TOO SOON! TRY TO KEEP IT SQUARE AND BLOCKY,THIS HELPS PUTTING IT ON TILLERING STICKS AND TREES.
EXERSIZE THE LIMBS QUITE FREQUENTLY.
GO SLOW,YOU CANT PUT WOOD BACK ON THE BOW!
WORK THE BOW TO FLOOR TILLER , THEN TO LONGSTRING.
KEEP A SCALE HANDY TO MAKE SURE YOY DO NOT PULL THE BOW PAST THE INTENDED DRAW WEIGHT!
GO SLOW,YOU CANT PUT WOOD BACK ON THE BOW!

i will not go on about tillering because i use a totaly different method that all of the highly regaurded bowyers do here and on other sites.
by keeping things simple i use measurements by using a cord,armslengths ,hand girths,and fingers.
i let the bow tell me which way it wants to bend.

by keeping all of these simple and primitive methods in mind ,and in use in my bowyering i started to produce LONGER lasting natural bows, by natural i mean by watching the bows "reactions" to my induced actions i took in my next step to advance my progress in completing the bow at hand.

[DCM]

Good post, and good advice.

I would add, keep your bow wood at near optimum moisture content while tillering. 

"EXERSIZE THE LIMBS QUITE FREQUENTLY."

I would amend this, and expand upon it as follows.

Only bend the limbs in order to check the bending, or the tiller, and only draw so far as you need to in order to reveal any flaw.  Also watch how the bow responds to work, which part sets.  Chances are you will chase flaws all the way up to full draw, at least until you have a few projects under your belt.

Wood does not need to be "exercised."  Quite the contrary, every time you pull the bow in the absence of perfect tiller, you are training those flaws into the wood.  Once you get the wood bending prefectly, sharing the load equally throughout, THEN work the wood a bit.  I prefer to simply leave the bow braced for 10, 30 minutes, 1, 3  then 6 hours, watching at each session very carefully how the bow takes set.  Also, rest the bow generously, an hour after each workout, in the hotbox when appropriate.  Let it rest back to it's relaxed shape and keep a careful eye upon how that shape changes as you progress.  Once you've reached equilibrium, the bow sets the same every time and it is equally distributed in the areas of the limbs you'd intended, then work the bow on the tree, or by shooting preferrably, up to full draw reducing draw weight where necessary.

People will say, if you don't exercise the bow, you'll miss your draw weight.  This is a misconception.  If you reduce the thickness of the bow too much, too early, you'll miss draw weight.  Repeating "you can't put wood back onto the bow."  You should plan for the weight you'll lose to work fatigue it is true.  I allow 5# to 10# depending upon the design and the material.  So, set out to make a 60# bow, if you want 50#, or alternately shoot for good tiller @ 25" draw if you want a finished and worked in bow at 28" draw.  Then reduce the bow if necessary once the tiller is right and the bow has been worked in some.

In hindsight, having invested a fair amount of time in this post, there are things you'll learn by doing and there can be no substitute for this exercise.  This is one of the things I learned by doing.  Maybe it will help save some of you some time, or make faster progress in your journey.

[Jesse]

Hmmm this seems to go against a lot of experienced bowyers that say you should exercise the bow 20 or 30 times after each time wood is removed so you can see what the removal did. This method has worked for me thus far but I really dont know. I got my advice from someone that makes and tillers hundreds of bows a year so I assume they know what they are doing.  I dont doubt your way but maybe both work as long as you are not pulling past the mark where you noticed the flaw until you get the tiller right? Im just trying to understand what you are saying. It sounds like you are saying that the wood will respond right away to wood removal so you should keep removing wood until the tiller is correct rather than exercise between removals. Then once it is correct you should brace it for a while and then check it? Maybee Im thinking wrong but if you have to brace it and then check it later to see if the tiller changed then you might have avoided this by simply exercising it. Im no pro just thinkin out loud.
  Jesse

[Justin Snyder]

I will keep exercising mine thanks.  Justin

[Badger]

      I almost hate to jump into this dog fight but I do have a dog in here LOL. No way I can answer honestly without contradicting myself almost. Many times I will pass along things that are considered safe conservative practices because I allready have gotten the rap of pushing things a bit too far sometimes, truth for me is I do excersise my bows but not as much as I usualy recomend others do. I lke to get the tiller straight and even as soon as possible at or around brace height normally and then from that point on I pull the bow to full draw weight every time I pull it, unless I see something in the tiller that need attention, when correcting a spot in the tiller I tend to give it a good many pulls to see if the correction took, often it wont fully correct on the first couple of pulls.
      Heeding some words by DCM above was a pivotal point in my bow making, "" never draw a bow any further than what it takes to expose an area that needs work"  aside from that i think I usually give a bow about 1/2 dozen pulls to the last place I checked it after removing wood, then advance it to the new benchmark usually about 1" further down the tiller tree, give it about 6 more pulls then recheck the weight and keep moving like that. Very hard to come in underweight if you are drawing a bow to its full draw weight every time you draw it on the tree. If a bow starts to take set it will sometimes be neccessary to opt for a lower draw weight or a less aggressive tiller shape, Steve

[George Tsoukalas]

Make sure the stave is ready to be strung before you string it for the first time with the short string. My method is on my site. I won't repeat it here. See Bow Making Directions.  Sand the back glassy smooth before stringing. All nicks removed. I do exercise the stave after each wood removal.  20-30 times at partial draws . The wood removal has to register. Otherwise I'm playing seesaw Marjorie Daw with the wood removal. Back and forth. Forth and back.  One limb's wood removal registers. The other does't. Keep removing wood. Target weight is missed. I almost never pull the bow to target weight (or a little over) until about 25 inches. When I hit my 26 inch draw, I'm about 5 # over. Perfect. Most of the final tillering has been done with a scraper like tool so there is very little nick removal. By the time I hit full draw my bows are broken in and rarely loose more than 3 # of weight. MBG great tip on leaving the handle wide. I also leave the nocks wide until at least first stringing . That way I can track the string better. I can go on as to how but I've found people loose interest by the end of a long winded post. If anyone wants I will continue on string tracking tips. DCM, good tip on leaving the bow strung. That's an alternate to exercising the stave. But I don't do it because I need the exercise too.LOL. Good tip, Badger, on taking slowly up the ladder to full draw. Sometimes I go only a 1/2 inch at a time. I'm a cautious sort. Have fun. :)Jawge

[Badger]

  Jawge, I kind of just through that 1 inch out there, I might have it on and off the tillering tree 5 or 6 times just to get my 1".  I know a lot of guys talk about training the bow to bend, I actually want my bow to have as little memory about being bent as I can get away with. Many times with board bows I have actually just floor tillered them till they felt like about 50# with bends equaling about brace height and then upon stringing them just go directly to full draw. More of an experiment just to see if it would make a diff not working the bow too much, if the tiller was right on the bow would work fine but not really be much different than a bow tillered the conventional way,.  I wouldnt recomend that on a stave bow. My normal method for final tillering once I get a bow braced is to just leave the bow braced while I hold the bow across my lap and  work the belly with a scraper, A few scrapes a few short pulls a few more scrapes and then back to the tiller tree to check weight. I don't always like to talk about a lot of things I do cause I know they are probably not the right way LOL. Something I want to add, if someone is rushing you to go soewhere or do something it is best just to set it down and do what you need to do, I have screwed more bows up trying to squeeze in a few more minutes than I like to think about. Steve

[George Tsoukalas]

Badger, I think at this point what works for us is what we use. LOL about the rushing thing, Badger. I always try to just finish that last task. Sometimes it backfires. Jawge

[wolfsire]

MBG, I think you ought to start draftinging a chapter for TBB V about bowmaking for dummies.  Seriously and that is a real recomendation and compliment.


TIM, TIM, TIM!! there is a serious issue for you on this thread.  Very good points have been made about exerciseing and the possibilty of improperly training a bow by exercising an imperfect tiller.  The effects of this should be studied and appear to be readilly testable.  I see another TBB V chapter!

[Pat B]

Good post Jamie. I agree with all that you said especially "keep it simple" and "go slow, you can't put wood back on the bow"! I see lots of folks just starting out and already they want to build a R/D boo backed bow or douflex recurves or LTR fantasy bows. Everyone wants to build a beautiful boo backed bow with the very graceful R/D profile but both a boo backing and the R/D design can be difficult to build even for someone that has been building bows for years(me  ). The first thing anyone ought to learn about wood bow building is how to build a simple bow with good tiller through evenly bending limbs. When that is accomplished, move on to the next step. You have to learn to crawl before you can learn to walk. I know there are guys out there that have made incredible bows the first time out. That definitely ain't the norm. Start out simple and develop your own style and methods first. Learn to use and master your tools...and in my opinion the most important lesson to learn about wood bow building is patience.
   Another good point Jamie made is leave your handle area blocky...and your tips also for that matter. Your main concern with wood bow building is to get the limbs to bend evenly and together and to hit the draw weight at a particular draw length. The handle area and the tips have no effect on this unless they are designed to bend. They are the last thing I mess with before finishing a bow. I even shoot my bows with blocky handle and tips to see how the limbs bend and recover. If the string doesn't line up just right it can be adjusted by removing wood from one side or the other of both the handle and tips. When everything is satisfactory, then I put the final shape on the handle and tips.
   This isn't brain surgery but it ain't a cake walk either. If it wasn't a challenge most of us wouldn't be doing it but the process behind bow building is simple if you let it be. From there you can make it as complicated as you want. I prefer to keep it simple.     Pat 

[Keenan]

 Good arguements and thoughts. All I know is that wether it's right or wether it's wrong, I've learned to excercise often. I blew up a very nice yew stave once by getting in a hurry and making to big of jumps on the first pulls. Could not see any flaws or reason other then just went to fast on the stages of bending.   Keenan

[Gordon]

I spend a good deal of time carefully looking the bow over while it is braced. It's surprising how much you can tell about the tiller without even drawing the bow.

[Traxx]

Big Leaf,
I personally would like to hear more about your tillering method.Who knows,i might like the way you do things better.

[medicinewheel]

.....
"EXERSIZE THE LIMBS QUITE FREQUENTLY."

I would amend this, and expand upon it as follows.
...

Wood does not need to be "exercised."  Quite the contrary, every time you pull the bow in the absence of perfect tiller, you are training those flaws into the wood.  Once you get the wood bending prefectly, sharing the load equally throughout, THEN work the wood a bit. 
...

EXACTLY!!!

this is a very good thread; beginner bowyers shout make a resume out of it, frame it and hang it next to the working bench!

....................

on the osagebow i just finished i was risking to end up under weight; i hit my desired drawweight on the spot through information i got from here!

thanks a lot!  frank

[DanaM]

Al of you make valid points and it proves that there is no one way to make a bow! What works for you may not for me.
The key ingredient is patience, take your time. If yer a beginner make a simple bow that shoots and don't get caught
up in making it pretty with fancy dye jobs, skins, tip overlays etc. They do nothing for the performance and the critters could care less
if their kilt with a pretty bow or a plain bow. Focus your attention on tiller rather than cosmetics.