Share your tips and tricks.

[bjrogg]

Pay attention and figure out which way the grain is running off on your first couple strokes with the draw knife. A lot of time I will stroke down the limb to remove wood on one side, and stroke up the limb on the other to prevent the knife from digging to deep.

If the grain is being especially difficult to work with a draw knife, use a sureform rasp and make long even strokes at a 45* angle to the limb instead.

I've lost a few bows to grain tearing, hopefully these will help new bowyers.

Yup and some wood you just have to use a rasp. Elm is one that comes to mind. Also knots are best reduced with rasp.

[burtonridr]

If you have a press on field point, glued with the melt stuff, and the shaft break right at the field point so you cant grab the shaft with pliers or your fingers. Use a wood screw, screw it in to the busted piece of shaft, heat the field point to melt the glue, then pull the old shaft piece out using the wood screw to grab on.

Learned that one tonight 

Hopefully the description is clear enough.

[jimmi the sammi]

2 quick ones.  Use a 5/16" tap inside your field points.  Put the field point in a vise and screw the tap into the point back and forth a little at a time until it bottoms out.  Glue the point on with your favorite glue.  No more pulled off field points in targets.

Several have mentioned ways to cover your bow making tools.  Go to your local fire station and ask for discarded fire hose.  It comes in many sizes and works perfectly for covering files, rasps, and all your other cutting tools.  I made a carrying board out of 1/4" plywood with fire hose stapled to it to hold each of my tools separately and make it much easier to carry from place to place with a handle cut out at the top of the board.

[Eric Krewson]

Well, I tried the tap solution years ago, it was better than a non tapped point but didn't work all that well overall. A better solution is to wrap a piece of sandpaper around an old shaft with a point taper, insert in the point and spin the shaft around a few times, this will clean the inside of the point to bare metal. Tap out the dust and glue the point on with two ton epoxy, it isn't coming off and can still be removed with heat but will need a bit more than one would use with hot melt.

[txdm]

On board bows, it's tempting to do some pre-shaping on the block of wood that you plan to glue on to make the handle thicker. But just leaving that block square gives you better surfaces to clamp down on for glueup, especially on the ends where the fades will meet the bow limbs.

[Woodely]

Here is an easy way to mount a belt sander upside down on a saw horse.

[txdm]

A crescent wrench can help mark string grooves precisely on both sides of the limb.

[ksnow]

I'm stealing that one, txdm. Simply brilliant.

Kyle

[DC]

That is clever, good one!

[zoomer]

I had trouble outlining (width) on a gnarly, crowned staves. Here's what I discovered today:
1) draw a straight line by joining many short lines one-by-one, aligning the ruler with already drawn lines. The line will follow the grain this way;
2) from drawn line, measure desired width and mark it with a dot. Do this every half an inch or so;
3) connect the dots.
Now you have an outlined width that follows the grain precisely and is constant along its length. Perhaps everyone already know this.

[burtonridr]

A five gallon bucket lid works really well for checking the tiller when the bow is on the tillering tree. Just stand back maybe 10ft from the bow, hold the five gallon bucket lid at arms length in between your vision and the bow limbs. You now have a perfect circle you can compare the tiller of the bow against. 

[Deerhunter21]

put two together for eliptical tiller?! like del does with his red and yellow circles?

[burtonridr]

Long pheasant and turkey tail feathers wrapped around your string the same way you would hackle a fishing fly makes a good light weight string silencer.

[DC]

I chuck up my arrow shafts in a drill and spin them against to belt sander. I've always had a problem with the chuck crushing the shaft or letting go and firing the arrow across the room. I can only get to the "belt travelling away" side of the sander. I tried a couple of things and finally come up with something that seems to work. I got a brass nipple that is just the right ID to take a 1/8" pipe thread. I threaded the inside with the pipe thread. The taper of the thread covers most arrow sizes that I use. I taper the end of the arrow a bit by running it though a pencil sharpener. Then spin the gadget on the arrow. As the drill is rotating it the tapered treads tighten on the shaft. Seems to hold well.

PS This worked well until I stared barreling my arrows. Now the ends are too small(1/4") for the pipe thread to grab. Apparently 1/8"PT is the smallest their is. I need a Plan "B"

[BoisBrule]

Holy crap... an actual use for a crescent wrench!

But seriously, that's brilliant.