Question regarding draw weight and new bow

[PrivateDeli]

Hello everybody. After a year long hiatus, I'm back to shaping some wood and making primitive bows. Feels amazing.  College life has been busy, but I brought my tools to my new place and have been obsessing over a new bow.

Been lurking on here looking for inspiration and ideas, and I finally settled on a pyramid bow. Massive for my size, it's an Ash selfbow 72 inches ntn. I'm sure I'm going to hit my intended of 60-70lb @ 28in.

Tillering is going slow but amazing. Got it tillered to brace height and its pulling 30 pounds. I just want to be cautious and I feel like its going to have a catastrophic failure somewhere. The tiller is almost perfect for what I want, but I can't shake that feeling.

I made it long so the Ash wouldn't have to bend as much, but should I be worried?

[Slackbunny]

Sounds to me like you are just re-experiencing the failure anxiety that is most common with beginners. That year-long break must have rattled your confidence. I think you just need to go for it, and if it breaks, it breaks. There are plenty more trees out there.

[PrivateDeli]

Yeah, Slackbunny, I believe that is it. It's just a beautiful bow.    Best looking I've attempted. (Fourth)

[Slackbunny]

I know what you mean. I sometimes find I actually enjoy working on less visually appealing bows more because I'm not so afraid to break them. Hopefully as I get more experience that will fade.

[PrivateDeli]

From start to the point i'm at right now has taken me three days and only a few man hours to do.

I've really roughed it out and i'm only taking my time on tillering. For me I thought the faster I'd go, the uglier it would get, but wow. I went so fast and didn't think about it, the vision I had for it just popped out of the wood.

Given the time it took to get to this point, I will just go for it once I get my new scale in the mail. Thank you Slackbunny. Good luck with your bows too.