Yew Recurve Build-Along

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After getting to the bottom of the crack and evening up the rest of the fade area to match, my fades or extended greatly, so this may change things along the way.

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it looks like my fades will be 4" long each, which really limits my working limb, so I will allow the fades to do a bit of work, so it may be tricky.

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After recurving, where I left the tips wide, and what looks like good alignment, I will narrow the tips to just over a half inch at the tips.

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I used to wait to put the tip overlays on, but I have had the string split out the by the string grooves where I didn't round it. I dont round the string grooves or it leaves small glue gaps where I glue on the overlay. Overlays aren't much work, so I dont mind doing them, even if everything doesn't work out in the end.
This will be my first time tapering the tips versus just gluing on the overlays to the sapwood. I measure 1/4" from the back and mark it, then 2" from the tip, and connect the line and saw off with a Japanese razor saw, and using a file, I make sure the area to receive the overlay is perfectly flat. Then I just glue on a black off my material, here is african blackwood. Then wrap in a strip of innertube.

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Once the tips are dry, I mark off what I need removed, and saw off with the razor saw, and using a rattail rasp, cut in my string grooves.

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Now I can really get into tiller. I like to use my bench vise to look at how the limbs are bending. This is basically floor tillering minus the floor, although I do both. This method is really nice for highly reflexed staves like Vine Maple.

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Im getting a pretty good and even bend out the limbs, so I clean up my tips, getting them rounded and string grooves in place. Which I forgot to get pictures of. Its bending enough to get a string on it. I usually don't do much of a low brace. I get it bending where I think it should be, whatever that means, and go to about a 5" brace. It really depends on the string I have available. It looks pretty even at first brace.

[Danzn Bar]

This is cool …...enjoying this!
DBar

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I hook it up and pull a few light pulls to see how she looks. (I didn't ask if it was a she, I'm assuming because the tree had berries. So go with the biological definition). Anyway, when I get it pulling even, I put it on the tiller stick, sitting on a bathroom scale and begin pulling to my desired final draw weight. I don't really trust cheap bathroom scales, so i calibrate them with something that is close to my desired draw weight, in this case, a 53lb Kettlebell. I place the KB on the scale with tiller board and stave (not a bow yet), and set scale to 53lbs. And this is what she looks like at 14". it looks pretty even at this point.
I will attempt to do the no set tillering method from here on out. Im having a feeling that I may have to drop a bit from my desired 50lb-55lb draw.

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I took these last few posts photos over the last week and my phone was having issues taking photos, storage full or something like that, so I missed the middle of the tillering stage. But I did try the no set method. I used 16" as my reference point to start with. After each wood removal, I pulled to 16" and took note of the weight, then exercised 50 times at 55lbs, then remeasured at 16". I did this each time, moving my reference point out to where it read around 46-48lbs, taking note of that measurement, then pulling 50 times again, and rechecking at the reference. I did this to about 24" draw and noticed very little change in my measurement but noticed some set in the limbs after taking the string off. Im not sure why this would be, but I decided to go ahead with heat treating the limbs again as I did before, but this time, where the wood took on the slightest brown color, just barely noticeable. I went back to tillering. After heat treating, it gained back quite a bit of poundage, so I was back to about 23" at 55lbs. The same thing happened again, took noticeable set. So I heat treated again, and decided to go for a target weight of 45lbs. This was much better. Now its coming in 45lbs at 23" after heat treating and retillering.
I build an arrow that I use for taking pictures of the bow drawn by hand that has painted lines of it that represent draw length since I can never see hand written inch marks. It's easier than placing tape at the draw length the bow is at, and pulling to it, and constantly changing it.

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I worked on a bit more tillering. After 24" of draw, I don't use the tree much, but take pictures of the bow hand draw with my phone set in a vise, with a timer set, taking 10 rapid photos. This way I can bring around the top limb to even of the tiller. This can just as easily be done by feel once you have your tiller good to go and you just need to bring the top limb around, giving the positive tiller. I like to take photos just to be sure everything stays even tho. So i have her out to 45lbs at 26", and pulling 48lbs at 27" just for safety. I took it out and put 100 arrows through her as well as a few hundred pulls to full draw on the tiller board. We'll see if she holds her shape after leaving it strung for a night, and a bit more shooting. Well that was more fun than tree'n a coon, now, on to the hard part of bow making.....the finish.
I will try to decide on what skins to put on it. I have a few copperheads, pacific rattlesnake, a WDB, and a canebrake to choose from. I'm not sure yet. After that, ill begin layers of truoil, this is where everything slows down for me, like a herd of turtles through peanut butter. This might take me a few months.....although I am getting a bit better at it. Now I need to clear my phone and make room to take pictures.

[helmet]

Nice work, you're making it look too easy!

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Got out to the shop today to try and get a few photos after clearing my phone a bit.
I decided to shape the tip overlays like rattlesnake rattles, an idea I got from Dan Viles, a bow maker who lives a few blocks away. I asked him if it was ok that I used the idea, and he didn't mind. I had decided to go with copperhead skins, but when I was in the middle of making the tips look like rattles.... I realized copperheads.....don't have rattles. It would bother me to to do something like that, so I will go with some sort of rattler.
Here's an unbraced profile pic.
Here is where I am with the tips. These have taken me much longer than I expected. I went at these with a triangle shaped file, and a round file. It's been difficult to round the inner portion of the rattle.

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I had a small brand made last year, to brand my wood stuff. If I heat it enough and let it sit on the wood for about 5 seconds, it makes a nice groove that I can inlay material into. A buddy of mine uses turquoise in a lot of his woodwork and gave me a bit to use so I thought I'd give it a try on this bow. I gilled the groove with fine turquoise, and covered in CA glue, and then wiping down with a rag dipped in denatured alcohol, then repeated the process to ensure the grooves were full.

[Hawkdancer]

Nice looking bow!  The rattler tips are unique, and nifty!  Good build along!
Hawkdancer