Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: bigcountry on July 29, 2009, 11:26:28 pm
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I can't believe what I just read. I was reading my Dean Torges book and he said some leave an untrained bow braced for 12 hours to break in. Has anyone done this? I try to get the string off mine as quick as possible. Maybe part of my issues.
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It's called sweating the bow.I do it for long periods on some,If I have a bow that just won't mind it's manners I brace it and leave them alone.If your wood is dry and you haven't over strained it, long brace times will help it to settle in. After all they stay braced for several hours sometimes during a hunt? Why not see ifin it'll make the grade before you take it to the woods?
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Darned if I know what is proper, but I don't leave mine strung, new or old, any longer than necessary. Same as holding a full draw.......1/2 second or so. See the shot, be the shot, release.......just that quick. Easier on a geezer's shoulder, too.
piper
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Thanks Timo. I kept reading "sweatin" the bow. I thought he meant, sweat from tillering and hard work. I glad I asked.
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hm, i haven't done that either...not at least, until they are already "broken in" and hit the draw weight at the draw length.
But maybe i will. Tonight after tillering this longbow i'll leave it until the morning...
Timo, you don't find this creates uber string follow?
radius
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If the bow can't stand the sweatin it can't stand the huntin. ;)
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Hi All, I occasionally leave a 1/2 made bow braced for several hours. As long as the wood is seasoned and the tiller is close and the braced draw is NOT more than your target weight it does seem to help speed the tillering of some staves. Well not speed, but helps the tiller happen with less sweat on the bowyer's part. For me it just takes the place of half drawing the stave multiple times before I check the tiller. Or for those staves where wood removal doesn't seem to be having any effect. Rather than just taking off more wood, it's better to slow down and leave the dang thing strung awhile. Then when you come back, you're quieter and the wood often seems to have gotten the message. Ron
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good call Ron
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I sometimes sweat a bow overnight. Helps it to settle in, if it's having "issues.'
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I leave my bow strung all day when I'm hunting. A well tillered bow should be able to take a good sweatin' without ill effect.
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Yes, Dean got that from Paul Comstock. Paul talks of this in the Bent Stick. Good shootin, Steve
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It should handle it but I don't usually do it.Even when I am hunting I unbraced if I get a slow time
or kick back for lunch. :) If I am shooting a course that is on 2 ranges I unbraced when I shoot the last target on the first and string back up when I am ready to shoot again. Wood unlike Glass has a memory and the more it stays in one spot the more it remembers.IMO. :)
Pappy
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Nope, I wouldn't think of leaving an untillered bow braced for so long. It's not a bow anyway. It's a strung stave. I baby my bows gently into existence. My staves are exercised on the t tree quite a lot before full draw. If I remember Mr Comstock leaves them strung as an alternative to exercise. Completed and tillered bows are different. Those I leave strung while hunting. I unstring them to give them a rest between 3d sessions. To each his own. :) Jawge
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I leave my bow strung all day when I'm hunting. A well tillered bow should be able to take a good sweatin' without ill effect.
Dean wasn't talking about a well tillered bow so much as he said Paul Comstock does this to a untrained bow.
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After I have one close to tillered out. I will leave it strung for a few hours at a time while finishing it up..
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What about leaving a bow pulled to draw weight (say, if you hit draw weight at 20", hooking it on at 20" and leaving it there?)....anybody do this? Or just braced?
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Not unless you like a lot of set and string follow. :)
Pappy
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After I have one close to tillered out. I will leave it strung for a few hours at a time while finishing it up..
This makes sense to me. I wonder when dean wrote that, he meant this, not a floor tillered bow.
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Not unless you like a lot of set and string follow. :)
Pappy
that's what i figured.
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I've left tillered-to-brace bows strung at brace for 24 hours before. I started doing this with board bows to prevent them form breaking. Now I leave them overnight once I get it tillered to brace to prevent alot of weight loss later on. As it was said, if the bow can't take it I wouldn't want to find that out while hunting.
Oh, and even when leaving it braced I usually don't get too much string follow unless I underbuilt the bow in the first place.
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ok, and kegan builds some heavy duty bows...
...consensus leans toward sweating the bow ...
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I'm going to try this with one of my bows I'm working on. Should be interesting to see how it comes out! How about exercising the limbs while tillering? Something just says to me it just ends up collapsing cell structure before its time. It may have something to do with the type of wood being used too. I will play around with it in the future.
David T
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I'm a believer in fully excercising bows all through construction, and certainly before they are done. To me, that includes giving a nearly finished bow one, two, or even three overnight braces of at least 8 to 12 hours. SET! STRESS! ANGST! Yeah, yeah, I know, but I look at it this way. Any bow I make will have to endure countless hours at brace while hunting, or even while roving or target shooting. I want the bow to take all the set, weight loss, and tiller changes that it's going to take on the front end, and NOT next week or 6 months later. So, when a bow gets within 2 or 3 inches of full draw, I like to leave them at partial or full brace overnight to allow the limbs to settle in to whatever they're going to do. I prefer to do that more than once on heavier or more highly stressed bows. I EXPECT a bow to take a little more set or drop a pound or two in weight during this period. (I do this in addition to fully excersing the limbs after each step of wood removal and shooting in a bow with 100 or 200 arrows or more, to be sure all is well.) Then once a bow is done, I don't have any worries about it loosing weight, flipping tiller, and all the other nonsense that breaks the hearts of bowmen. I don't want a bow that I have to worry about coddling. When I leave my truck at black-thirty to go hunting, I have no qualms about leaving it strung until I come out a noon or whenever, over and over, all season long. And when the season ends, I know my bow will draw the same weight as opening morning. Perhaps it's not always "needed", but if you've had bad experiences with bows dropping weight or with limbs performing contortions after use, or if you're tired of thoughts like, "Oh dear, it's been an hour, maybe I should unstring this thing," crossing your mind, then maybe you want to try giving your next bow a long overnight brace or three.
Rest assured, a long brace won't kill your bow...at least not if it was designed and tillered properly with dry wood. Again, this is done when nearing final tiller and not during floor- or early-tillering stages, and only when the tiller is looking good. This 67#-er was made with at least two such sessions. This photo was taken right after it was completed. Several hunts and a few thousand arrows later, it still looks the same. Same reflex, same weight, same braced fingerprint.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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I do what Jawge does. I will not leave an untillered bow strung very long. I exercise it quite a bit on the tree while I'm tillering. I worry if I leave it strung unfinished the wood might want to develope bad habits. It doesn't bother me to leave it strung over night if it is finished, unless I've been hunting in the rain all day.
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Just about every bow I build I build to hunt with. Generally 2 will make grade each year.
I leave a newly tillered bow braced for 4 to 6 hours to sweat it. If it has a weakness I don't want it to show up on stand.
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I mostly sweat a bow if it has a lot of reflex in it, one that I might have laminated. AS some one said it helps to train the grain. also I only do it for a few hours, no reason for my standards to leave it any longer unless its a heavy bow. denny
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I don't leave an Untillered Bow Strung past working on it....but once I have a Bow completed...I always string it up....sit it in the Corner...and leave it that way at least overnight....always.....and it has never to this day had anything but good results....no adverse effects....some of you all seen my Paddle Bows and others I took to the Classic....they are some characters ....and they can shoot....but there is no string follow either....if it is Tillered Properly it should not hurt a thing to leave them strung to sweat them in.....JMO
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In the Bent Stick, Paul talks of compaction of the limbs during tillering. We don;t want suprises, like hinges or extreme weakness in one limb. He suggests, that once you are pretty even on tiller before bracing, put on long string and use a long tiller stick and give it as much bend, as possible for...3-5 minutes. If you have his book, read under, More on Tillering.
Also a couple of years after the first TBB came out. I asked Dean if he would sell the Elm Bow, pictured in the book. He said he lost that bow after leaving it strung to long! Good shootin and tillering,Steve.
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Well, this has been very educational for me. Thanks for all who replied. I wished I did this on my last osage. I had it tillered good, but the bow had natural deflex, and I thought I could take that out. So I flipped the tips. Went to check thetiller, and it was stiff where I flipped one tip. So like a fool I took off some material. Tiller looked great. Shot it about 60 shots, and went back to check tiller, and developed a hinge where I removed the material. So it was decieving on stiffness.
I bet if i left it strung for 6 hours, the limbs would have came into place. Thanks all.
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ok, and kegan builds some heavy duty bows...
...consensus leans toward sweating the bow ...
I'll say this though: I've found that if a bow is too heavy after sweating, trying to drop alot of weight usualy winds up with a bow that doesn't shoot very well (like shooting ina bow at 80# when you wanted one that was 55#). In cases where I'm trying to get the bow to a specific weight for someone else, I usually sweat it after getting to half draw or so and seeing that the bow is going to be about 10-15# overweight at that point.
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Built a bow at the Classic this last year. Sanded it, sealed it and then checked the tiller again to make sure it worked right. Took it to the range and shot it about 10 to 12 times. Took it back to the shed and Greg saw that one of the limbs went out of tiller on me. I wonder if I set it down strung for 12 hours if the other limb would come around?
PS: Pappy or Greg, you seen that bow lying around the shed by any chance? ???
David T
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David, the weaker limb or part of that limb will bend.
I only sweat a bow for 4 to 6 hours. I'm usually not on stand that long while hunting. As soon as I am back at camp I unbrace my hunting bow. If it is dark I unbrace it when I get out of my stand. At 3D shoots I unbrace after shooting the round.
I don't see a need for a wood bow to be braced longer than that unless your hunting last longer.
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Dang it! Was a nice bow too!
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Can't say that I do this.
I will work my bow but only after I have started the tillering process. Before that the only time it's getting bent is when I am floor tillering it.
When I'm done that bow building session, the bow is unstrung and put up. I do handle the bow alot. What I mean is, during the floor tillering and beyond process, I will take the bow upstairs and lay it on the table or hold it while on the couch and just look at it over and over again. Running my hands up and down it, turning it over, set it next to the Rooster and just look at it. Kind of telling the piece of wood "you're going to be a bow, a good bow, my bow." Yeh, it's weird but's it's my way.
Now the finished bow gets strung and left strung all day if needed. If it can't stay strung and keep it's weight and set, then I did not make it right.
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Interesting thread,but I have to agree with George and Eddie.I never leave mine braced for long till it is a bow,then I'll hunt with it, braced ,all day.I've got several bows built this way that literally have hundreds of thousands of shots through them,a couple of fishin' bows that have remained braced ,and rained on, all day long.I can't argue with success of the baby -along method. ;) JMO
God bless
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so the Rune Bow i'm working on right now (yew longbow, flat belly) came to full compass at about 22" draw, at 40#. So i scraped and scraped, trying to bring it to 40# at 28". No change. So i left it braced a couple times for a few hours (say, 6) and even still could not bring the thing where i wanted, and it had a good couple inches of string follow.
i don't know what to do: how do i tiller the bow to the weight i want, when it's being stubborn, without it getting string follow and without tempering the stave?
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I allways sweat my bows, to different degrees depending to need but some kind of sweating it's allways done, most commonly the first sweat is done once I got a nice balance and bend in the limbs and usually at about 16" draw, than I give it a 1-2 hours session, usually a longer one at around 20"