Those two both turned out great, Dave. I’m sure however you finish them up they will look Amazing.
I’m currently working on a 65” heartwood yew recurve that I plan to sinew-back. Would you be able to let me know a couple details?
- what are the profile dimensions, and is it a straight pyramid design?
- did you chase a ring on the back before sinew-backing? And
- at what point in the tillering process did you sinew back the heartwood bow?
Thanks for posting your build and excellent work! Much appreciated!
Will
Thanks will. Very kind. Ya I have no problem at all posting. Sometimes I wonder if anyone reads them but always glad to hear when it benefits someone out there. I’ve got a lot of guys on here to thank myself for helping me through some builds. Keeps the community thriving! Always glad to share.
These bow are both very close in dimensions
They are roughly 60” ntn and 1.70-1.75” at widest out of fades. They are not pyramid designs per se but loosely based on it. I have made several pyramid style bows but I tend to lately gravitate to this modified version of it. They only narrow slightly 1.75” to 1.5” wide about 10” from the tips. The limbs narrow to about 1/2”-3/8” at the tips from there. I did not chase a ring on the heartwood only bow. I was selective on my belly drops though when splicing them. I wanted very dense heartwood with similar grain orientation on both ends. Not just for looks but for function. They should both return to rest at same time and using two very similar pieces of heartwood helps. I had a concern early on about a small section at the end towards the tip of what looked like grain run off on the one end of the heartwood bow but did not seem to be an issue after the rawhide and sinew. Even with floor tillering and drawing to 20” it was solid. I think it must have just been a section of rings direction shift down the limb to give the appearance of run off. I glued on handles blocks as I have larger hands and like bigger handles. I had floor tillered these bow and drawn to about 20” draw prior to laying down the sinew. If I recall they both came in around 50-55lbs at 20” from low brace height prior to doing sinew. I could have pretillered down to about 30-40lbs in retrospect as I had a fair bit of wood removal after the sinew cured. I weighed each bow around the same mass prior to sinew. Each bow got measured bundles of sinew the weighed 65-70 grams. I lairs it down in one go. I don’t normally do it that way but again was testing some things. I did not apply the sinew all the way to the tips. As you recall from the earlier posts in this thread I used 2 very different methods of laying the sinew as well to test out some things. I was pleased and surprised at how well the heartwood bow did perform really being that it was sinewed with tb3. The tb3 glue did add a little more weight as expected in the end for the heartwood only bow but it didn’t hurt it much if at all. My conclusions so far on these two bows is basically this, the bow with hide glue and sinew performed little better but only marginally really. Would I make another tb3 sinew bow? Absolutely! Very happy with it. It retained about an inch less reflex compared to other one but again not a deal breaker. I posted some early videos of me shooting and got decent speeds from both bows. The heartwood bow did end up being about 2-3fps slower but still shot low 180’s with 10gpp. The other one shot mid 180’s with 10gpp. I’d hunt with either bow. The interesting part will be over time in the field will the tb3 sinewed heartwood bow be less susceptible to moisture effects??? We shall see. Anyway I would make another and likley will soon.
As far as the tips. I kept them stiffer and just narrowed them for mass reduction. Also made sure to add my flipped tips prior to sinew. I also added rawhide overtop my sinew fyi. It didn’t seem to effect my speed much at all. I thin down my rawhide to almost parchments though to save on weight. I give the sinew a good sand prior to glueing down rawhide with tb3. The next tb3 and sinew bow I do I will be incorporating a hot box. It took forever to dry. The hide glue variant dried much quicker.
Hope that answers your questions. If not reach out anytime I don’t mind at all. I’ll be making more heartwood only bows soon too as I have more belly drops to use. The z splice worked great too and is a great option to salvage that precious heartwood instead of in the burn pile.
