Friday 17 August 2012

Long Day & Still Not Quite There

Whew, it's been hot and I've been in and out of the garage working away on the bow.
It's almost there, I've put on horn tip overlays and got the tips nice and skinny and been slowly tillering to even out the limbs and bring the draw length back.
In the pic the lower (left) limb is a hint stiff in it's centre. It's just over 26" draw there and has moved on another inch since then, with the lower limb improved.
I possibly moved onto the file and scraper a bit too early as the progress has been slow, but better slow than sorry. I've been trying to avoid set and get the tiller a bit more elliptical. It's been tricky as over the last 3 or 4 inches  of draw the bow is working very hard. I've been easing it off a tad down near the grip as a tiny bit of extra flex there is becomes quite a bit 30" away at the tip. I've been exercising it and shooting a few arrows, which were kicking a bit left and waggling their tails in flight at first until I narrowed the grip.
It's 45# at 27" now and a bit of fiddling, fettling scraping and sanding will get that last inch of draw. The belly is beautifully silky smooth and the bow is looking rather graceful now with a satisfying feel in the hand.
I'll make a proper string tomorrow and shoot it in before any final tweaks to the tiller. After that it's down to an arrow plate, sanding polishing and finishing with Danish oil.
Update:- Saturday, see right, I went for the Waterbuffalo horn tip overlay on a slim tip. It gives a nice contrased when the nock is polished. You can really see the slimmed down shape now. It's gone from ugly ducking to swan. I'll leave that bit of bark on the grip.
I've added another picture of the 2 nocks shown in the previous post, so you can see them from the side.

3 comments:

  1. May I have a couple more shots of the nocks please? I want to see how they sit from the side.

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  2. Yup, I've added a pic. The slim nock gives a smoother line for the string at brace. At full draw there isn't really any difference though.

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