I'm trying to make a couple basic bows for my wife and myself. I want these to be our workhorse bows that we can shoot with all the time and shoot accurately so we can have fun and not have to sweat fighting our equipment. Ideally I want to make cut in arrow shelves - as close to center shot as possible. The bows will have glued on risers mainly so I can contour them to get a really comfortable pistol grip type of handle. I want to go center shot so that arrow spine won't be so critical and there will be very little paradox. With a glued on riser and a no-bending handle area I'm thinking it should be okay to have a cut-in arrow shelf, or is that only something that one does if the bow is backed? I'm going to try to pick up some hickory for these two bows tomorrow. Oh yeah, they'll be board bows, not stave bows.