This crack might be a "game changer." It's not a good picture of the location of the crack. It came from the handle, across through the left fade and of the limb. GRRR! I thought I had sanded/scraped through most of it, but when I heated that limb to straighten string alignment, it opened up more. I've scraped and sanded it out now, I think. I'm 80% sure that I still have enough wood to make a 50# bow. I had planned on a stiff handle bow, but it's 50/50 as to whether it will have to be a slightly bendly handle bow. My saving grace is the limb are 2" wide. My handle is still over 1" thick. So I'll be making the call as I get more bend in the floor tillering.
Tuesday, I'll even out the trough I scraped in the fade to remove the crack. Then reduce the thickness of the limb through floor tillering. I'll have a better understanding of bow then. After that, I'll attempt to heat out some woo-dee-doos on the other limb. I've never worked on "one limb at a time" during the flooring tillering before. But, if I work on flattening the humps out of the top limb first, tomorrow, that will be all I get done, because I like to wait for the wood to neutralize at least a day after I use a heat gun on it before I try to bend it. We'll see how this technique works out
Promise I'll take more pictures, tomorrow.
Man, it great to be in the shop, WORKING ON A BOW, again. I had forgotten how addicting those little curls of yeller wood are.