I pulled this piece off the pile a couple months ago, while looking for something with character. Boy did I find it! When I first opened it up I wasn't sure there would be enough in the handle to keep it together. Careful whittling revealed some soft wood, but nothing that a hedge bow couldn't handle.
The handle had some natural deflex to it, so I gently heated some refelx in both limbs and started tillering. With the offset I had to work a little to get the string to line up, but soon I had it shooting and stuck some tips on the bow. I was giving serious thought to using my highly prized set of copperheads, but a little more shooting and I nearly blew the tip off the top limb. It seems the wood I had used for the overlays just wasn't strong enough to handle the 55# of fast flight force.
The limb was split badly for about 5" so I filled it with glue and clamped it down. After it dried, I sanded off the old tips and went with whitetail horn tips and knew I would never have to worry about them splitting. Some final tweaking and shooting and I chickened out and went with a sweet set of eastern diamond back water snake skins I got from Cipriano. The last piece was a small mesquite wood arrow shelf and a white leather handle to draw it all together.
This bow may not win any awards for perfect tiller, but it shoots great and is well balanced in the hand. With the deflex-reflex design it has nice early draw weight and takes no set after a lengthy shooting session. It pulls a sweet 50# @ 28" and is a very stable bow.
Thanks for looking
