Hickory Backed Cherry Longbow Follies; Episode 2

[Minuteman]

Well I got the egdes of the back scraped down yesterday.The middle third is still 3/32" but the outer third on each side is tapered  down towards the edge to a little less than half the thickness of the backing. Boy it sure is pretty!
 Put it on the tree with a long string and my lower limb is quite a bit stronger than the upper.Guess thats better than havin a stronger upper limb since I want the lower limb a little stronger than the top one anyway.
 My next dilemma after tiliierin' is what to do with the handle.Used to be I'd get excited about the way it was looking and wanted to feel how it was gonna sit in my hand so I'd cut out the handle. All that did was make it wanna flop around on the tillering tree. I've got the front edge where yer fingers go, rounded on both sides and I removed some of the wood on either side so it wasn't so much like a 2x4. Just cant decide what to do.
 How much depth do you need to allow a cut in shelf? Right now where the arrow will pass is pretty wide I'd guess near 7/8"and close to 1 3/4"" deep.  I don't wanna weaken the wood too much in the handla as I'm scared of the handle lam popping off. It is setting on a raised portion though, a pretty substantial one too.
 Come on Manny! You've broken a few haven't ya? You know where I'm coming from.Break two in a row and ya get to feeling a little inadequate.Got a good feeling about this one.
 Chris.

[Marc St Louis]

Chris
I thought you said ELB. Don't think I've ever seen an ELB with a cut in shelf . Here is a stiff handle BC bow that is 1 1/4" wide and 69" long. It pulls 50# @ 29"



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[NOMADIC PIRATE]

Don't cut a shelf in, it's HUGLY !! just my preference

Lower limb stronger it's good , but not too much :oI wouldn't do much pulling on the tree untill more balanched.

...again, numbers just swim in my head without connecting 

pictures woul be nice ...like kids with books

[Minuteman]

Yeah Marc, I probably won't cut in a shelf after all. Wouldn't be much of a LB with one.
  I suppose a little leather bump at the top of the handle would suffice for a shelf.
  Boy, wheres Rod Parsons when ya need him, eh? He sure would give ya a ration at a moments notice. Wonder what he's doin' nowadays...
 Still a little skeered the handle will pop off.
 Manny , I've been takin' some pics as I went and I'll take a few more and post 'em soon as I get the limbs evened out. Me like 'em pik-shers 2!
  Hugly? I've heard of fugly and bugly but not hugly!

[Minuteman]

Somebody take away my tools! I can't tiller to save my life!
 Man, I had nothin but trouble with that thing. Couldn't get it to bend where I wanted , I'd take wood off one side and the opposite side would get weaker or at least it seemed that way. Finally got things close and then in the last 7 inches there was no more weight . It was just like it dried up. Do reflexed limbs get away from ya like that?
 I'm about ready to start punchin myself in the face and laughin about it.Grrrrrrr!
 Well now I've got a 70" bow limbs don't match one bends more in the middle than the other one and its all of around 38-40 #@28".  Man I'm just  ... dangit!
 I've got a piece of beaded paneling with the lines going horizontally on the wall behind the tillering tree. Should I take that down? It seemed like the more I tried to get my limb tips to come to the same point the more i lost control of what was going on.I need a light behind me when the bows on the tree too. I think having a shadow on the right limb makes it look different than the left one I dunno.
 Got one more cherry belly and one more hikree backing. I'll try again I guess. At least this one stayed together.

 

[DCM]

Chris,

This is supposed to be fun buddy.  I don't mean to be presumptuous, only I've been exactly where you are.  Settle down, take your time, don't get all hung up on one project.  Get you some simple stave bows going, in various stages, and go back and forth over a couple or three projects.  Time, patience, is the one ingredient you can measure into a project and be assured of improving the results.  IMHO  Also, get into a position where you can post a pic occasionally.  It will help provide another perspective, and offer opportunities for you to re-assess a project.

Can you pike the cherry bow?

Do you live in bow wood country?  I thought you did, but I recall you working ERC, and now backed cherry, and have to wonder if it's just curiousity or necessity.  Not that there's anything wrong with it, just that it's sometimes easier to get a successful project from the more main stream materials.  Do you need me to bring you a fat ringed osage stave or two to MoJam?

[DanaM]

I glued mine up last night, lets see if I can break 3 bows in a row. Yer not alone minuteman.

DanaM

[Justin Snyder]

You are too hard on yourself.  Go look in the mirror and say I'm a nice guy and people like me. ( you do remember Saturday Night Live don't you) Don't give up on this bow yet.  It still has 38-40# off education in it.  Even if you don't believe you can get the bow you want out of it, you can get some more practice out of it.  I would cut 2 inches off each end and keep tillering. Use nothing but a scraper. It is slow but it takes a lot more time to mess up.  Put it on the tree and quit looking at the tips. Start exercising the limbs and watching to see where they bend.  Use a pencil to mark the belly in areas where you don't think it bends enough. Take it off the tree and take about 5 scrapes off the marked area. Then exercise the limbs some more.  Keep this up until you get both limbs bending in a good arc. After you have marked the limb each time, then you can look at the tips to see if one bends farther down.  You can try to get the limb travel even by working out the stiff areas. Don't remove wood from the whole limb unless the whole limb is too stiff and it bends even. The limb travel will work itself out before you are done. If both limbs are bending in nice arcs, then start working on getting the limb travel even. Put it on the tree and exercise the limbs. Take a pencil and mark the weak limb from fades to tip. Then use your scraper to remove the pencil mark.  Did I mention EXERCISE THE LIMBS. Without proper exercise you cant always tell were the limb wants to bend.  You are in Indiana, its not that far from Pappy's. Make a few glue ups, or rough out a stave or two. Then head on down to Pappy's for the Tennessee Classic. You can get all the tips and advice you need there.  Justin

[duffontap]

Justin, 

You'ld make a great motivational speaker.  Anyone who can make SNL relavent on a primitive archery page is a friend of mine.  "You'll probably find that as you go out there, you wont amount to jack squat!"  Do you happen to live in a van down by the river?

                J. D. Duff

[Badger]

Minuteman, don't feel bad, I have been doing this for years and still can't tiller for beans. Good advice above! Steve

[duffontap]

My personal secret to good tiller is spending two years per bow.  Well, practically.

            J. D. Duff

[Minuteman]

Hey thanks guys! I sure do appreciate the support . I went out to the garage this mornin' before work and made sure I had my last piece of cherry and a suitable back in the drying box and fiddled with that bow some more. Strung it up and half drew it a few times. Checked out the limbs again. They didn't look as bad as I'd remembered . Exercised them a little more and got  it back gradually to my cheek. I'd had it to 28 last night on the tree. About oh say the 3rd time it exploded. Pretty dramatic really. It literally threw my bow hand open . It split all the way from about 6 inches down from the upper limb tip to well below the handle. Guess I let go of the string as I flinched away cuz I got a string welt on the side of my thumb from it. There had been a mild hinge just above where it ended up breaking. Think it was still a little stiff there, or the backing failed I haven't really looked at it yet.
 I appreciate the offer Mims but I can't make Mojam this year.   I got an offer to hunt antelope in Montana come September and Ima goin'! Thats what this bow was for .Great advice too by the way . I think I need to paint the word  SLOW ! above my tillerin tree or something.
 But yeah I've got 400 pounds of osage setting in a rack in the garage. I KNOW I can make a bow out of osage. I've never had an osage bow fail on me. Well ,not a straight limbed un messed with selfbow any way. Broke a few limbs learnin to heat bend. But yeah I've always been into the alternate bow woods. I got a barn half full of ash. I cut down so much ash the first year I was startin out  youda thought I went ash crazy. Never have built but a coupla good ash bows .Did learn alot in the process of turnin them into kindling though.
 The other reason I'm switchin to laminated bows is they aren't as hard on you physically. My elbow had been givin me alot of trouble when I started my first HBC and not having to draw knive an osage stave to a growth ring was a major plus. I 'm pretty good at taking my time I'm just not any good at keeping that pace. It took me prolly 12 hours of work to get that bow where it was when it broke. I had been takin my time up to that point I went to the shop and wasn't in the right frame of mind to do it but did it anyway. I was tired and sore and shoulda left it til tomorrow. My fault, I blew it, but ya'll already knew that 
  It sure was pretty before I tillered it!
 Thanks for the advice, Justin.  JD wasn't that the one with Chris Farley? Did you see the one when he and Patrick Swayze were trying out for the chippendale dancers? Man, I peed my pants!

 Thanks again guys for all the support and I'll do my best to wrangle some pic postin lessons out of my wife and I'll start a new post for the next one with some pics .

 

[Hillbilly]

Yeah, I figured out the hard way a long time ago that if I'm not really in the mood to work on a bow, I'd better leave it alone that day. I ruined a few that would have made good ones by working on them when I was in the wrong frame of mind.

[Marc St Louis]

Actually Chris I have had some BC bows do that to me to so don't feel bad. It makes a good bow but can be a pain sometimes

[duffontap]

Both of those skits were classics.  Why did Farley have to die?

              J. D. Duff