Ok, I had to put this recurve on hold for a little bit as I had a bit of a flirt with appendicitis, but now all is well. I got the overlays all shaped up. While I was a bit under the weather I got the sinew all broke out, and even separated into 3 different lengths. Just to find out later after I was better and able to tiller the bow, that this bow is not really gonna be worth the sinew anyway. Either one side of the limb being thicker than the other, or the snake it has, has given me some work getting the strings aligned. It's kinda crazy as the belly is not perfectly flat but has some wave to it, which I had to give it to weaken one side of the limb to get the siyah to not twist. Er, I mean recurve. It appears to be landing somewhat in the middle, or at least close enough to not come flying off the bow (I hope). Without the sinew, this bow could only be 40# at the most. Which is not bad, if only it had some reflex or something,... Here's some pics. I have it tillered out to 25/26 so far, but I need to finish sanding before I can get some longer draw pics though.
Took me a good amount of tweaking to get the string to lay in the middle... It still kinda rests to the side on both of em right now. This is the main reason I don't feel like sinewing this bow. I just don't know what it will want to do after sinewing. It was my stupid fault for not leaving the limbs wide and going on "faith" that I could guess where the string would lie... I hate myself sometimes.
I got a couple hackberry staves that would be much better for sinewing than this one. I also forgot, that this bow has a bit of a deflexed curve in it toward the tip of one of the limbs, which made it a bit of an aggravating tiller. The other two I have are perfectly flat. I would like to see what a sinew backed hackberry is like.
Here's a low brace. I have lost a good amount of faith in this bow I would say, and thus have abused it a bit. It has been braced at like 8" or so on accident. I still don't have a proper string made. Also to note, I keep hear a scary little tick, but I can't find any source, which is making me think it is the overlays coming on glued? I did clamp them pretty hard when gluing, which I find ain't the best thing to do especially with oily woods that are hard to glue like osage.