Australian Ironbark flatbow

[PatM]

Perfect tiller, for a crossbow.

[Aussie Yeoman]

Thanks guys, I'm glad you like it.

Funny you mention seeing bows made from something different. At least 50% of my bows are made of Ironbark. I've not yet made a bow of Elm, Hickory, Osage, Black Locust, Ash or the like.

[willie]

It must be nice for the guys in the classes you teach, to be able to jump right into the finer aspects of tillering, without the "by
guess and by God" part of stave reduction commonly used to bring a bow to an acceptable floor tiller.

Do you have some basic rules of thumb or maths to use for figuring tapers, that lets your students get in the ballpark?
A bendy handle with a touch of fades and 2" reflex, is not the easiest design to start with. IMHO.
 

[Aussie Yeoman]

I do have some maths and figures for determining the thicknesses. Quite a bit. Not as much as say Alan Case or Woodbear, but more than the average bowyer.

The students on the course mostly make straight up flat-bellied longbows. Theirs are not reflexed either - they lay their bows up straight. Only the really high draw weight bows tend to ever have a waisted grip (and even then not all the time). So for a first project the bows are not overly difficult.

The templates sure do save a lot of time. The students go straight from bandsaw to long string, then within about 90 minutes they have a decent brace height. We start on a Friday evening, and by mid Sunday arvo they're shooting their new weapons. It's pretty cool to see.