help needed on stacking

[wally]

I have an ash gull wing bow that was too heavy for all day shooting at 60lb and it stacked badly. I tillered it down to 50lb but it's still a bit heavy for me and uncomfortable because of stacking.
I'm going to take it down a few pounds and wondered if I could sort out the stacking at the same time or is it a design fault in the bow. Help please (paint job is mine)

[NTD]

An unbraced, braced, and fulldraw pic would help us out quite a bit

[wally]

will take photos tomorrow as it's late here in england and will post

[toomanyknots]

Very interesting cool looking bow btw, you should definitely post a couple good pics of it, very cool looking. But the only way you are going to get rid of set is to make your bow longer. It would probably be possible to add some siyahs if you were skillfull with it. Thats the only way. I have heard of sinew making bows draw smoother, but siyahs are really the only thing that will make that big of a difference. How long is the bow, as this effects stack the most? (or string angle, whatever, same thing/principle, )

[NTD]

Poor tillering can exagerate stacking.  If the bow is whip tillered for example it would stack badly.  You can make minimally stacking short bows but you'd have to make sure you tiller the bow to do that.  Tillering appropriate to the profile would affect stack just as much as making it longer.  That being said there is a point that too short on a straight profile bow will without doubt give you unavoidable stacking.

And....that doesn't look like a "short" bow.....

Halfeyes, recent bbi is a perfect example of a short bow tillered PERFECTLY to avoid stacking on a short bow.

[toomanyknots]

"Poor tillering can exagerate stacking.  If the bow is whip tillered for example it would stack badly.  You can make minimally stacking short bows but you'd have to make sure you tiller the bow to do that.  Tillering appropriate to the profile would affect stack just as much as making it longer.  That being said there is a point that too short on a straight profile bow will without doubt give you unavoidable stacking."

Thats a very good point that I totally didn't think about.

[wally]

I hope these photos help. Anyone know a quick way of getting photos down to the 200kb allowed?

[wally]

Here's another

[crooketarrow]

    ALSOME bow
   As said poor tillering,shorter bows. I tiller my bows and inch or so past the leanth I want this really helps.

[George Tsoukalas]

I've never built a bow like that. The tiller looks a bit uneven but I need a shot from further back to see the whole bow as you draw it to tell for sure. That lower limb is bending quite a bit close to the handle. If you agree, You might want to get your scraper and scrape the near handle area at the top limb  a bit. Count the scrapes. May be 10 at a time and test the bend and draw it. easy does it. Why don't you show us a better full draw picture before you start making changes. Jawge

[toomanyknots]

Yes, very cool bow, 

[NTD]

I don't see any bend in the fades that isn't there at the unbraced profile.  It's not bending too much in the fades, in fact from what I can see it's not working there at all during the full draw.

I don't know enough about this bow, the reasons for the design etc but I can tell you that taking one look at the string angle you can see that you have a stacking problem.  Again, I don't know how or why these are supposed to bend where they do but you have nearly zero work going on in the inner to mid limbs and I think that's contributing to the bad string angle. 

I may be wrong but I think these styles of bows were not intended for Mediterranean style long draws and maybe that's why they do the work the way they do...

[thomas h]

that is a very nice bow sure wish i had the skill to make something like that.

[wally]

It is a nice bow but I didn't make it. Someone gave it to a friend of mine, who didn't want to work on it and he gave it to me. It's ash 70" but why the design I don't know. When putting bends in it started lifting in 2 small places on the natural back and the maker glued them down with wood glue. For safety I put 2 sinew patches on then painted over them, and as the patches were odd I painted other parts to match up, then re tillered it down to about 50lb @271/2. and heat treated belly before sinewing.
As I said it stacks still, and I want to take it down a few pounds and hope to lose stack?

I hope this further picture helps with the freat advice I'm getting so far.

[markinengland]

Wally,
Looking at the final picture it does look like the string angle is close to 90 degrees. Getting a more even tiller so the tips aren't quite so angled might help as might removing some of the deflex.
Good luck,
Mark