Wow, extremely kind words! Everything I read said take it slow so that's what I did, painfully so, and I guess the results speak for themselves.
I should also say there were several broken bows of different designs before this, with each one seeming to break at a later stage of construction, building upon the one before it. This one was actually from a "B" stave that I set aside as something to use in case I screwed all the others up. And, well, I screwed the others up, and it wasn't until I decided to stop fussing over layouts and just go with my gut that I pulled this stave out and slowly went to town.