back me up on tiller... patch installed.

[artcher1]

Eric, I either use the tape or a coat of Tru-oil, depending on how wet/dry the wood is. If dry, I'll round all edges, finish the back to 220 grit sandpaper, and let the Tru-oil be my first coat of finish. Then I'll move on to the belly for weight reduction. So the first thing you need to do right now is round off those edges before you pull your bow any further...........Art

[echatham]

the edges that you see in the picture are all in the non bending handle area. the limbs are round.

[echatham]

id be shootin her in if it weren't raining... pics when she's all dressed up.  thanks for helping me along!

[echatham]

Well i had a bump in the road... Got drunk and was fooling with it (never good) and stupidly flexed it backwards a little bit.  Glue joint separated a hair at the edges of the patch.  So i ground out the patch and glued in a new one.  Its fine now.  Got probably two hundred shots through it and just waiting to go over it in sunlight with fine paper before finishing.

[echatham]

Now i have a question.  Its got about an inch of string follow now... So a total of 4" of set.  Seems excessive to me.  What could i have done differently here to have less set?  Ya think it wasnt dry enough?  I read about bows only taking an inch or less set.... And i just dont know why i cant pull that off.

[PEARL DRUMS]

That's a lot. How long is the bow and how far are you drawing it?

For the record: I still think that was a fret and not a tension crack. Tension cracks are often perpendicular to the sides of the limb while frets are squiggles that can go in several directions. That fret and 4" of set feeds my "too wet" conspiracy.

[echatham]

I think you are probably right.  Its 64" ntn and i draw 29".  I think i probably could have made the non bendy handle section shorter.

[PEARL DRUMS]

That's a fine length for 29" providing your in the 1 3/8" width category.

Ive made my fair share of tension tears and frets, so that's where my thoughts are derived from. Im not arguing with Artsy or anybody else that thinks its a tear, just giving you my opinion.

[WhitefeatherFout]

You got me scratching my head on this one bud.  Pearl makes good sense in thinking it's a moisture problem and that concerned me a bit so I just got out of the woods and checked the mc on the sister staves to that one as well as every other stave that was where your stave was.  everything out there was reading 10-12 percent which is where they usually end up normalizing at around here.  If you had that stave in a hot box for a while I don't see where moisture would cause that much set.  The moisture should have come down to around 8 percent which would mean something else is in play here.  How humid was it while you were tillering? 

[echatham]

I don't know man, every bow i have made has taken the same amount of set, which has kind of fooled me into believing that more starting reflex is the answer, or im doing something wrong in my tillering.  i do all my work in the basement, which is pretty dry as far as basements go... no musty smell or water problems.  im gonna rough out another stave in the next couple of days and let it cook for a month or two, and if that one does it then i just can't believe that moisture is the problem.  how critical of humidity are you guys when you are tillering?  do you have a "more humid than this and i don't tiller" point?  never gave it much thought honestly.

[echatham]

i really want to go to one of these bowyer gatherings you guys talk about, or at least pay one of you pros a visit sometime, get some hands on learning.  Mr. Fout is really the only other bowyer i ever met except here on the interwebs.  Connecticut is a selfbow desert.... so it seems.

[echatham]

it is an improvement for me though, despite the set.  id say except for the R/D BBI i made, this one is the fastest, which i attribute to my skinniest tips to date, and the least string follow in a selfbow. Matt, just judging against the bows we shot through the chrono that day, id say it probably gets 150 or better with 550 gr arrows.... lots of room for improvement though, and of course... im not happy yet haha 

[WhitefeatherFout]

Well Eric,  150 won't set records but it'll kill a deer.  I absolutely won't tiller a bow outside or in my shop if it's humid. I had a few take on more set that I had tillered while it was humid.  I don't have a set humidity number I go by but if I walk outside and just start sweating or if it's raining I go to the   basement where I run a dehumidifier.  A problem I had with tillering when I got started was I tended to make the last third of the bow bend too much too early on and left the lower end too stiff to make my weight.  This resulted in more set I think.  I'm not sure if that's what is going on with yours but in the unstrung pic it looks like about halfway up the limb is where things really changed.

[Don Case]

I don't know man, every bow i have made has taken the same amount of set, which has kind of fooled me into believing that more starting reflex is the answer, or im doing something wrong in my tillering.  i do all my work in the basement, which is pretty dry as far as basements go... no musty smell or water problems.  im gonna rough out another stave in the next couple of days and let it cook for a month or two, and if that one does it then i just can't believe that moisture is the problem.  how critical of humidity are you guys when you are tillering?  do you have a "more humid than this and i don't tiller" point?  never gave it much thought honestly.

Just out of curiosity, do you have a RH meter in your basement?  When you said "which is pretty dry as far as basements go"  it just made me wonder.
Don

[echatham]

I dont.... But you can bet im getting one now.  Think ill tiller the next one in the livingroom next to the fire place.