Don said: "Then in the hand for the rest of the way...Checking and feeling for balance, this is critical for short limbs...Tiller may not look perfect but balance in hand is..."
I just relearned this, in fact. I don't do a lot of BITH bows because of the wood available to me, stuff like elm that I assumed wasn't elastic without being wide. And I hate wide flat handles, so......
But recently I made an elm BITH as a tillering exercise to help teach a beginner. About 1-1/8" wide, almost 1" thick middle, 68" long or so. I was pretty happy because it was taking some, but limited, set and we were headed for a high draw despite me rushing to tiller. But when we started shooting it at partial draw I could really feel that it was way off. The strung profile looked fine, and the drawn profile looked fine, but the top limb felt so stiff that it wanted to rock back in my hand. I wanted a barely positive tiller, and moving my hand down an inch or two wasn't enough.
SO, what I figured out finally, because the top limb had a series of nipple knots and lumpy covered over pins, despite my efforts, there was less wood bending. So, it took a tad more set. Thus, the tiller LOOKED pretty good, but the top limb was BENDING more ONLY due to BEND + SET!
So, I went back, thinned every thick spot I could, and accepted that the tiller looked slightly lopsided, but trusted how it felt at full draw.