Hey gang. Here’s an update on these bows. As you know if you e been following this thread both these bows had issues. The second one shot very well up until it started failing a bit near a belly knot. It basically was stressed around the remnants of what was left of the knot and threw the tiller off. Still shot ok but looked funky. I set it aside until recently. I decided to boo laminate the belly. I’ve done boo laminated bellies before but have always scraped and sanded the nodes and re tilled much the same way a self bow. This proof of concept bow is nothing new but had checked a few boxes for me as something I wanted to try anyway and this bow was a great candidate for it.
I was very careful to pre tiller this bow after removing about .150” thickness on the belly of each limb. This allowed me to get rid of most if not all of the troubles around the knot that had caused issues. I pretillered the bow after removing this belly wood to good looking balanced brace and then to about 20”. At this time it was about 32lbs at 20”. I then proceeded to prep my belly slats. I decided to go with a very slight taper from the tip at .120” down to about .140”. I went thinner at the transition fades around .100” to allow for the bend at the fades. I decided to stagger the nodes and place nodes midway of the nodes on the back to spread out the irregularities of nodes somewhat. You can see the pic where I’ve marked with arrows of node placements. Glue up went good. I used the usual inner tubes and double wrapped the area at the bends in fades. I clamped this down with several clamps after wrap. I took a good look at the bends to ensure even bending in the boo slats prior to glue up. The one slat had slight more crown then the other so comparing bend is important I think. Keeping tips aligned after glue up is important too. As far as tiller after the glue up of belly lams I did a little side tiller only. This allows me to keep the surface of the belly slats untouched. I think this made the difference on this bow. Tiller isn’t perfect but fairly decent considering side only scraping. Time will tell. I’ve got about 50 arrows through it now and it seems great. It is around 67”ntn and pulls about 55lbs approx. the new mass of the bow is 629grams. It was around 600 before. Not a deal breaker. I need batteries in my digital draw weight reader! I took the rare opportunity with my wife around to take a couple short vids. Sorry about my scruffy appearance. I’m a all day work clothes kind of guy 😀. I’m sure you guys get it! The bottom pic shows the reflex at about 4.5”. This was bout 30min after shooting today out to full draw for about 50 shots. The reflex was about 4” immediately after unstringing the bow. I was quite pleased with this!
Anyway the speeds are very good. The bow shoots very straight no matter what I fire through it. The chrono readings seen in the video are promising even at only 27”draw. I later had slightly better readings at 28”-29” draw but my wife ditched me and thus my camera person.
At 27” draw at 10gpp the video shows readings of 186 and 187. Very respectable I would say for all wood bow.
At 27” draw at about 7gpp arrow the video shows reading of 195fps. Not too bad.
Later in the day I shot a 202fps with the same arrow at 7gpp and was closer to 28-29” draw.
Also shot a 188 and 189 with 10gpp at 28” draw later also. Not a ton faster but a little bit and it was a nice cloudy day for my chrono.
I’ll post some pics here too but here are the two video clips of the above readings for interest.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/LiHDU9pxXU9JXadi7https://photos.app.goo.gl/Y2LgnrZD8cqfz1sL9
