Black cherry, pull further or pike

[Mo_coon-catcher]

I've started another black cherry long bow. This one from a narrow knotty stave that I wasn't able to get much width or depth from due to the knota and tear outs during splitting. It's 83" long, 1.5" wide and 1" thick at the handle tapering to 3/4" mid limb. with a curved belly rectangular profile. I havnt pulled it far yet since I'm working on getting the bend good before seeing what it'll go to. The dilemma I'm at is, it's not going to go minimum warbow weight, so I'm debating on going for light weight with a 32" draw to practice the long draw. Or tiller it to my standard 27" draw and shoot and pike until it shoots well. I've pulled it to 19" where it's pulling 40 pounds. Once I get the bend where I'm happy, I'll work it back and see what weight it ends up. But at the moment in only expecting a top of 55# at my 27" draw and upper 60s at 32". That is if it holds up to being pulled that far. It needed the midlimbs to bend a bit more, I rasped it but havnt checked since I did that yet. I was hoping I could get it up into the 70s, but there wasn't enough good wood there to do it at that length. This is all counting on it not detonating too.

So what do you all think?

Kyle

[PEARL DRUMS]

Id be happy if it stays together at 45 @ 28. Black cherry isn't good bow wood at all and asking anything close to war bow numbers is asking too much.

[Mo_coon-catcher]

Here it is pulling 50# at 27". And it's a dog. I got 115 yards from a 600 grain arrow. If it was closer to 150 yards I wouldn't worry about it. I'm thinking about just pulling it further and see where it fails. I would rather push it into an ok performer and break it along the way than it be as sluggish as it is. Here's the bend at 27". I made it a circular tiller to make it as low stress as possible to make sure it would hold.

Sorry the picture is so blurry.

Kyle

[Mo_coon-catcher]

We ended up pulling it to 30" on the tree and pulling about 52 #. With no fretting and got a 600gr arrow about 150 yards. So a lot better and the bow felt better in the hand. I'm going to call it good there and clean it up. I'll get some pictures when it's all cleaned up.

Kyle

[Bob Barnes]

you did well... I've never had any luck with black cherry and it grows all over my farm.  I'm looking forward to seeing pics and the bow.
Bob