As my main exercise is making the bow not shooting it, I just call a bow "done" as soon as I shoot it a dozen times at my intended draw length and weight. I just make "you finish" bow blanks, in that sense. I have no interest in finishing the bow in the sense of using stain and varnish or whatever. But I do have a dozen or so bows that has been shot at least one hundred times over almost a decade. Unfortunately the earliest bows are actually shooting much better than the later ones, probably because I spend much more time on them, I guess. If a bow shoots about 160, or even just 150 fps, I would call it a successful bow. About half of what I have made do that regularly. On the other hand, I do have a couple of dozen broken or abandoned staves. I did recurve the tips of a dozen of so bows, but I have no idea how much benefit is from recurving in achieving that 150 fps. So far as I know and read, what matters is the side profile of the bows. If your tips are a couple of inches ahead of your handle, no matter how you managed to get there, you have done a decent job and just keep on tillering until it shoots 150 fps or so. If not, you have a bad stave.
As for pyramid, it always helps to start with a stave as wide as you can get. Within reason, of course; say 3 inch wide will be good, as you can always narrow it. Good luck.
