Finally after the last layer dried, I strung it up with a long (relatively speaking) string to check the tiller. To my surprise, it looked good enough to shorten the string to brace height. In many ways, I was relieved since I really didn’t know how I was going to tiller the bow. I didn’t think that I wanted to scrape the belly. Was I to sand off some sinew from the back? Luckily, I didn’t have to try either. I drew the bow down to 23-inches. I noticed though, that the bow needed to be stiffer in the handle area so, I unstrung her and added a fourth layer of sinew just at the handle area and a bit beyond. That did it. So, I guess that I figured out how to tiller the bow; just ADD sinew where it needed to be stiffer.
Now for the decoration – I wanted some horizontal designs but, knew that I wasn’t much with a paint brush. I also liked the idea of snake skins but, I wanted something different. To me, this was far too special of a bow to settle for common rattlesnake skins. I thought about coral snakes. I began spreading the word that I would give my right leg for a set but, quickly learned that they weren’t too common. Also, they are a very small snake and to get two skins that were a close match and then for both to stretch even an inch wide was going to be tougher. After about another month, a friend in Texas came up with a set. Then, it was time for the hair on the upper limb. Instead of horse hair, I saved a beard from my first wild turkey that I took 3 years ago. The magic in that beard had to be part of it. Here are the final specs: 36-inches long tip-to-tip. 42 lbs. The arrow in the pics is 24" long. The bow bottoms out at 23 inches of draw.
