"Exercising" limbs

[NewBowyer]

After scraping some wood off, how many pulls is a good rule of thumb to use to make before assessing the scrapes I just made? I've been doing 30-35. Is that sufficient? I don't want to keep scraping if the latest ones I've made haven't yet "taken effect."

[RyanY]

I usually do 10-20, flip the bow, and do 10-20 again. Most of the time that’s enough. In rare cases a stiff spot will develop in spite of continuing to remove wood. In those cases I like to exercise it more and sometimes leave it braces for a while.

[Weylin]

I just pull it enough to check the tiller well. usually works out to about 10-15 pulls. That's plenty in my experience to register change from my latest wood removal. I'm not a fan of excessive limb "exercising". In my opinion it's just unnecessarily stressing the limbs and inviting set. I know many would disagree with me but that's what my experience has shown me.

[NewBowyer]

OK so maybe I’ve been overdoing it- was doing 30-35 pulls after each adjustment. Haven’t noticed much set at all yet, less than an inch and it’s up to 25” draw. I’ll keep that in mind. Weylin you do the Swiftwood Bows videos, right? I watched a great many of those before I dived into this- they were extremely helpful, especially the multi-part one on making a flatbow.

[Weylin]

Yep, that's me. Glad you found them helpful. A lot of guys do a set number of pulls, so I can't say it's super harmful or anything. It just seems like unnecessary stress to me. Especially of there are any tiller issues. If I can see a problem in the tiller it doesn't make any sense to keep cranking the bow back over and over.