Greetings! I've been lurking around here but I've never posted before. My name is Paul, I'm originally from Wisconsin, but I'm currently in grad school in the Boston area. I made some longbows a few years back (i think early college years?) but I stopped for some reason until just recently when a friend of mine from school here wanted me to show him how to make some longbows. We got 4 straight grained 1x2x6" redoak boards (i started last time on redoak and i didn't fail miserably, so i figured it was a good place to restart). I had him read the tillering chapter in TBB and he paged through some more (like the bows from boards chapter) and I told him what I could remember that was relevant to simple board bows. He picked up how to use the tools really quickly, but since he's new to this and i'm really really rusty, we need some more eyes to critique the tiller. we only finished one of them so far (tried and true boiled linseed oil), and here's a shot of it at full draw:
and some more pics:
That bow is 71" ntn, with a 6"stiff handle of maple/oak scraps i had leftover from some furniture, and the last 6" or so of the limbs are stiff. the center 2" of the bow is 1.5" wide (thinned and rounded at the stiff handle) and tapers to 1/2" tips, though those were made narrower a little bit too during finishing.
It pulls about 35# @ 28" (it's his first bow, so no 50 pounders for him), and after shooting it in it has about 1 3/4" unbraced set. The tiller doesn't look super even to me (even enough that we finished it and moved on) but you guys have a much better eye for tillering. To me the lower limb looks like it has spot that bends a little more neard the mid limb, but my eyes might just be screwing with me. Do you guys see any problems?
We made a second bow with one of the other boards that's a bit lighter for my wife. It's about 30# @ 28", same dimensions, but she only has about a 25" full draw since she's pretty short. I figured tillering more would let me use it too
I think this is a picture of the tiller:
That bow has about 2" of string follow, but we did kinda speed our way through that one because dinner was almost ready. That one hasn't been sanded/finished yet, though. it also bends about 1/2" more on one limb, but we're just calling that the top limb. How does the tiller look to you guys?
I still have 2 more boards left because I half expected at least one of these to break, but they both turned out fine! I'll have to finish the second one and get to work on 2 more!
