Saturday 22 September 2012

Maple ready for Shooting In

I've been away for a few days, a nice little break round North Norfolk, saw some seals and rode on the North Norfolk Railway, being pulled by a steam engine. Excellent.
I've spent today taking a little off the bow, getting it back to full draw and making a string.
The heat treating has done a good job and the tiller is better. I've gone for a slightly elliptical tiller for a change, it took out some of the set and added a few pounds to the draw weight.
I've shaped the grip a bit and shot about 20 arrows through it, including another damn Robin Hood straight down the plastic nock of one arrow!
I've sanded it a bit too and here's a couple of pics of the quirky deflexed tip of the upper limb, it makes a good character feature.
It's about 55# at 28" at a good brace height. It may loose a tiny bit of weight during finishing.
I may take it up the club tomorrow and shoot it in some more.
Some of the discussions on tiller shape get a bit frustrating, some people preach an elliptical tiller, pointing out the 'problems' of a circular tiller, whilst ignoring those of the elliptical.
If you look at the angle of string and bow limb at the tip you'll notice it is becoming more than 90 degrees, this can lead to the bow 'stacking', that's to say it suddenly starts to feel harder to draw than it should (due to the geometry of the angles). A simple way to explain it is to say you are beginning to pull along the limb as if trying to stretch it rather than bend it.
The difference between a circular and elliptical tiller is fairly slight and it seems a bit dogmatic to insist on one or the other. I daresay I could draw a fairly convincing circle on that picture too... I might even do it to illustrate the point.
Ha! I just tried it and I'm talking complete tosh... it's nowhere near an arc of a circle!
An elliptical tiller is supposed to give more even stress on the limbs and be faster, but doubtless the chronometer will tell when I get round to testing it. Meanwhile I've still got a soft spot for the arc of a circle tiller, especially on longbows.

BTW. Ignore the ripples on the limbs as these can appear to be weak areas or hinges, but they are there when the bow is unstrung too, and are just features of the stave. 

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