Author Topic: Choosing Rings for Back AND Belly  (Read 3809 times)

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Offline tom sawyer

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Choosing Rings for Back AND Belly
« on: June 13, 2007, 11:25:35 am »
Marc brought up a good point in his thread on his latest osage bow.  He mentioned wanting to get certain rings for the belly of his bow.  I think we sometimes only consider what ring we want for our back, something reasonably thick that we can feel comfortable chasing and will provide good tension work.  But you really might want to also envision what rings are going to be showing up on the belly of the bow as well.  You'll have to estimate the thickness of the limb, that can only be done based on experience but you can usually get kind of close.

Lots of spring wood near the surface on the belly, is a bad deal.  You want a nice thick ring on the belly, or at least thinner rings with good summer ratios.  I kind of favor the slightly thinner rings though, just because the stairstep feathering of the rings is a great guidepost for doing the thickness taper.
Lennie
Hannibal, MO

Trapper

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Re: Choosing Rings for Back AND Belly
« Reply #1 on: June 13, 2007, 07:59:55 pm »
Well I consider the belly of your bow to be the only focal point on the finished bow, because the back isnt as pretty as the belly, so I take alot of pain somtimes to get the feathers to look right on the belly. Trapper

Offline tom sawyer

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Re: Choosing Rings for Back AND Belly
« Reply #2 on: June 14, 2007, 11:22:51 am »
Thats true, it is the most beautiful thing to see the feathered rings all nice and regular.  And I'll tell you waht, it is more often than not that they line up right in the center and properly spaced when the tiller is right.  At least for reasonably straight, clean wood.
Lennie
Hannibal, MO

marvin

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Re: Choosing Rings for Back AND Belly
« Reply #3 on: June 14, 2007, 12:52:11 pm »
Great post Lennie. It makes sense to give at least as much and perhaps more consideration to the belly ring although much harder to predict the dimensions that will have the belly end up falling mainly in a particular ring over the length of the limb. Certainly worth thinking about as compression is usually the weak link in the wood.