Getting to full draw without losing thickness or gaining set?

[superdav95]

that said, stuck needs to decide if the bow needs to be a replica with exact limb thickness dimensions or a shooter, which tillering without set, calls for slightly thinner limb.
If going for a shooter, the reduction in thickness is not all that much
[/quote]

I can agree with that. 

[stuckinthemud]

It needs to be a shooter, so I will go carefully, try to minimise set and lose whatever thickness I need to and hope it’s not much

[Hamish]

Not done any tempering on this as I have lost a couple of yew bows that blew for no reason and some of the more experienced forum members have suggested this can happen with heat treated yew, also, the original probably wasn’t heat treated and I’d like to stay “correct “ if at all possible

Yes you do need to be careful with yew and dry heat.  Heating a little reflex is different to toasting the belly though, like many people do with whitewoods. Just enough heat to bend a couple of inches of reflex. A week or 2 resting to rehydrate the limbs before continuing tillering is pretty safe.
 I agree the original bow is unlikely to have been subjected to heat, or reflexed. They had on average access to better quality wood. However the original bow probably took a fair bit of set too, so if you want authenticity I wouldn't be too worried how much set it takes.

Do you know in what condition the original bow was found, eg intact, or fragments? Where was it found eg, burial find, bog, or other etc?

[stuckinthemud]

The bow is almost perfect, silted up moat (bog) original drawings show the bow as straight but photos sent me by the museum show deflex/set so there is a strong possibility the wood is compression wood and moved with changed moisture levels. Will try and post photos tomorrow

[Hamish]

Cool, looking forward to it.

[stuckinthemud]

We have, from top to bottom the Skane Lillohus Lockbow:  tiller, bow (belly up), bolt (arrow) an a completely undocumented crossbow lath also found in the moat durng the 1939-44 "dig".  The bow itself is really interesting, with a deflex-reflex limb and a straight limb, the weaker R/D limb was left thicker than the other, they didn't bother completely cleaning off all the inner bark, and the wood is extremely knotty.  The original bowyer was very skillful to get a working bow from that stick.




Check out that bottom bow!  I cannot imagine how you could turn a stick like that into a working bow, not only is it really, really lumpy, its also very short - its somewhere around 70 to 75cm ttt (28 to 30 "), but, maybe they didn't turn it into a working bow and threw it into the moat in disgust...

[Hamish]

Wow! Never seen any photo's of this bow, just drawings. There doesn't appear to be any lugs that hold the bow on the tiller, nor any tickler /lever
to push up the string from its groove, to release the bolt. Do you know if any of these parts actually still exist?

[stuckinthemud]

The tickler and the pin appear in the 1940s archaeological drawings but are no longer with the tiller and  lath.  There weren’t any lugs on the bridle, the lath is lashed onto the end of the tiller, no bridle as such.