String lengths for non-working recurves?

[Lefty38-55]

Trying to help out a friend via cyber-space - emails and phone texts, etc. ... of which I admit is NOT ideal ...

Said he bought an old selfbow of wood that he is unsure of the species, with recurved tips, but they look (to me) like the non-working or static ones like I see some do on selfbows. I told him of the usual string lengths of longbow strings 3" shorter than the nock-to-nock measurements across the back and -4" for recurves. This bow appears to have ~4"of setback as it braced to about 10". With the set, he measured as 65" N-to-N.

I advised him to unbrace it immediately and yes, his 1st purchase was a good bow stringer. Advise? .. besides a 'longer string', lol? And what would you opine the proper or target brace height range to be?

[Pat B]

The bow is out of tiller with the top limb not bending much at all and the bottom limb only bending mid limb. Also the lower recurve looks like it opened up when braced.  You probably want a 6" to 7" brace height but with that much set I doubt the bow would perform well at all.

[Fox]

The bow is out of tiller with the top limb not bending much at all and the bottom limb only bending mid limb. Also the lower recurve looks like it opened up when braced.  You probably want a 6" to 7" brace height but with that much set I doubt the bow would perform well at all.

+1

[Lefty38-55]

The bow is out of tiller with the top limb not bending much at all and the bottom limb only bending mid limb. Also the lower recurve looks like it opened up when braced.  You probably want a 6" to 7" brace height but with that much set I doubt the bow would perform well at all.

Thank you Pat (and Fox) for the input! In my haste to post the question, I didn't even thoroughly review the photo, else I would have or should have noticed the limbs were not equal, but of course, not to the level of detail you provided. That is a big MISS on my end, I'm embarrassed to admit ...

Is is possible to recover or rework a bow in such a state? Was this likely caused by standing the bow on end for years?

[Pat B]

Basically I'd say no, it's not worth trying to fix. What wood is it? When was it made? How was it handled before your friend bought it? Too many variables to give you a definitive answer.

[bownarra]

If you had to get it shooting it would be half an hour with a scraper to sort out the tiller. Is it worth it? Probably not.