In Shawn's "the Ante" thread he challenged me to throw in so here it is. The bow has been finished for a few weeks but I just got the chance to shoot it through the chronograph. I made this white oak recurve with an old piece I had lying around from years ago after I worked it when the wood was still too green and it took some set. It was already laid out to be a longbow but I thought I'd see what I could do with it. I have to give Marc all the credit as I referenced his work and his article in PA on building a high performance recurve as a guide. Turned out 41#@28" and is 64" ntn. Just after unbracing it holds 4" of reflex and slowly returns to just under 6" of reflex. Starting reflex after heat treating was just over 8". This was my third time shooting in front of a chronograph and man do I suck!
Consistently short drawing at least an inch. Best I could get was 174fps after about 30 shots shooting a 438grain arrow with 4" fletchings. Easily averages around 170fps with my slow and short draw. I'd like to see what it would do with someone who can actually shoot. String is 10strand D97. Brace height is around 6". Turns out there's a reason I don't build many recurves as it took me about 20 tries to align the tips!
I'll definitely be trying another one of these at some point without a piece of scrap. Fades were too long and it wasn't as wide as I would have liked. Hopefully by that time I'll be a better shot. Thanks for looking.
