Bow already final tillered. Recurve?

[cool_98_555]

Hey guys,

So i finished an osage bow not too long ago.  It's a pyramid style, 1 1/4" at the widest with a straight taper to 3/8" tips.  I just heat-treated the belly and re-tillered and the bow has 1" of reflex now and is shooting great.  I'm toying with the idea of adding recurves to the tips to up the performance.  I've already finished the tiller on this bow however, so i'm not sure.  I have read before that if you want a recurve you should design the bow with the intention to be recurved from the very start, not at the very end.  However, I have seen others recurve the tips after finishing a longbow.  What do you guys think?  Would it be possible?  Not worth it?

[Del the cat]

You could do it but if you flip the tips by a couple of inches you may find that the bow takes a whisker of set and the tips end up exactly where they were before.
I'd tend to go for maybe half of what you think... you could always do more later. So maybe just a little gentle flip and see how it goes.
Remember the old adage... If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
If you want to design in a lot of recurve maybe it makes sense to get it in early, but it also makes bracing and tillering harder. IMO it's hard to get a lot of recurve into a wooden bow effectively unless it is a shortish draw. I've found that the defex and reflex tends to balance such that over all the amount of recurve isn't great... maybe and inch.
IF I was putting in recurve I'd wait until the bow was at least braced...
Others maybe will have different experiences with this... reflex isn't something I do much of.
Del

[Badger]

   I agree with Del. How much reflex did you start with? If you lost some of your original reflex adding curves will cause you to loose more and you will end up loosing performance.

[cool_98_555]

I started with about 3" of reflex and now it's 1".    Maybe recurving would not even be worth it, not sure.  I'm thinkin' just leave it alone now...  I draw to 29".

[Pat B]

Leave this one as it is and start a recurve. Plan it from the beginning and it's less likely to take too much set if you go gently.
Can we see pics of your new bow?

[bradsmith2010]

sounds like a nice bow,,just leave it,,and shoot it,,
make a recurve on your next one,, that being said,, if you really want to experiment,, thats cool,, you probably wont gain any performance,, but any bow making experience will help you down the road,, even if it helps you learn what not to do,,
I posted as you were Pat

[Morgan]

Personally, I’d leave it. I’ve only tried recurving finished thickness bow tips once and it ended up splitting on me.

[cool_98_555]

Thanks for the replies guys.  I'll just leave this bow as it is.  Time to finish it up and post some pics!  Now i have to decide if I want snakeskin on it......