Tillering strategy?

[George Tsoukalas]

I'll heat to get the string on the handle or 2 remove deflex from a limb(s).
Why don't I break out the heat gun at every opportunity?
That's a good question.
I guess I like to take the path of least resistance.
I like to look at the character of a bow. Each of my bows is unique.
My bows please me.
I have no problem with how y'all want to make your bows.
It's all good.
Jawge

[Pappy]

Well said Jawges,lots of options in wood bow making that is for sure.
 Pappy

[George Tsoukalas]

Thanks, Pappy! What a great pastime we have! Jawge

[munkinstein]

This might be a little out of context but when I first started out, and by all means I'm still a novice at this art, I got some cheap wood and deliberately made the bows in a fashion that would cause exaggerated hinges and other things that would constitute bad tillering.  I found at the beginning I was not seeing certain aspects such as were the wood was bending and not bending, I wasn't seeing obvious hinges, and twists.  I do now.  I just used some cheap pine that was laying around and made a whole bunch of firewood bows.  It has helped a lot with my tillering.  My reasoning is that we are very use to seeing bows with great tiller here and on other sites, but we very rarely see examples of poor tiller in bows.  By deliberately making mistakes I found how what these issues look like, how they occur and what not to do if I want to tiller a bow correctly.

[mwosborn]

Thanks Jawge and Pappy for you thoughts - appreciate it.

Before I posted I figured I had 3 options...but didn't want to say anything until I got some input........1) leave it as it is and tiller it out.  2) Take the reflex out of the one limb.  3) add reflex to the other limb.

I have already heated the crap out of it to get it "straight" and the string running through the handle -- so I was reluctant to do more heating not knowing how much it can take before affecting the integrity of the wood.

Would heating again affect the wood in a negative way?  If not, would it be better to take away the reflex from the one limb or try to add reflex to the other limb.  My instinct (which may not mean much) says that heat induced reflex won't match up to natural reflex.

Thanks again,

Mitch

[SLIMBOB]

I will on most of my bows heat bend in reflex in one limb to match the other (pappy alluded to this and I agree). If one session won't get it, do another. I prefer to limit the heat bending on the working parts of the limbs to only once, but I want them to match each other and line the string up down the handle. Sometimes it takes me several attempts to get it right. When I started this madness I rarely heat bent anything other than tips and handles. I just stuck with what I had on symmetry or the lack thereof. I now do my best to get the limbs to match up from the get-go. No ill effects that I can see from it.