Long string vs. very low brace

[Kegan]

Assuming you have it floor tillered, and maybe even knee tillered, would it hurt to try and tiller it by bracing it at 1"- check the tiller and adjust, 2"- adjust the tiller and adjust, 3"... and so on until you reach brace height? Seems the only down side to this would, of course, be the extra stress it undergoes in bracing, and the longer periods it would be strung (as opposed to the few moments on a tree). Seems that it would only be as bad as using a tillering stick (which some people don't support)?

But would it be a completely bad idea?

[benjamin]

I think it would just take too long. I use the long string until the tips move about 4''-8'' then I brace it about 4'' and go from there. I let tips travel about 8'' because the limbs bend a little past brase hight when stringing. It just seems like too much of a hasle to shorten the real string an inch every time. Plus, if the tiller was good at oh, 10'' with a 1'' brace, it should be fine at an equal distance with a normal brace hight. My two cents.

[George Tsoukalas]

You can go from floor tillering to bracing. It's a good idea to reduce the weight of the stave to 15# over target weight. That way there'll be less stress at bracing. I long string tiller to 10 inches and check weight until the scale reads target weight or 5# over. Then I brace it. That puts the stave 10 # over final target weight. More on my site. Jawge
http://mysite.verizon.net/georgeandjoni/

[Dano]

I don't bother to floor tiller anymore, never could see the limbs bend that way anyways. I don't see a real benifit to increasing brace in increments like that. I think it's way more important to get the limbs bending well on long string before it's first bracing, the way Jawge does. It's not comletely a bad idea, it's just that there would be so little difference in the limbs from 1" to 3" to make it worth while.

[JackCrafty]

Sounds good to me.....but then again, I'm usually bass ackwards with my techniques.  I don't floor tiller anymore either...I just shape the bow, slap the string on when the bow looks right, remove wood from the belly as needed, and increase the brace height gradually as you described.  With Native American designs, one end of the bowstring is tied to the bow anyway...so it's easy to make the adjustments.

As long as you are careful not to create too much set in the bow, I don't see a problem with your idea.

[Badger]

  I do it a lot like Jawge and Danp talked about. For the most part if you floor tiller a bow and flip it back and forth testing it to the floor,  when you cannot tell one side from the other it will usually be braced pretty even. I find with a long string that the weight will read pretty close to what it reads with a short string at the same draw length. On a long string the tips will appear stiffer than they really are so caution has to be used not to hinge the outer limbs. Steve

[Justin Snyder]

Kegan, I do it much like George and Steve. With the number of bows they have built I think that it would be plain silly to ignore their experience.

A thought for you. If you brace a bow to 1" you probably have to bend it considerably farther to get a string on unless it is a string with absolutely not stretch. Depending on how you brace, I believe you also put most of the stress on the upper limb when you brace a bow since that is the one you are pulling on to get it to the string loop.  I suspect that a bow being braced to 2" will probably not bend much in the bottom limb but bend to 6-7" on the upper limb.  If you watch the limbs on a bow as someone braces it you will see that one takes far more stress. Justin

[JackCrafty]

Hmmm...I might be mistaken but if you see one limb being stressed a lot more than the other, then the bow is not being braced correctly.  No?

[Justin Snyder]

Hmmm...I might be mistaken but if you see one limb being stressed a lot more than the other, then the bow is not being braced correctly.  No?

Could be, but short of some type of braceing apparatus it is real common.  Watch next time you see a few guys bracing their bows.  Justin

[Kegan]

Thanks guys. I have just had some bad luck with tillering longer bows with the long string, usually winding up much too stiff near the handle, and overstressing the narrow tips and outter limbs, and when perfectly matching up the limbs, I usually found that after bracing and unbracing it after shooting a few times the tiller might be off a little- and wondered if just getting the bow accustomed to the exra stress early was okay. It's good to know that going from floor tillering to low brace isn't the huge no-no I had believed it to be. I didn't know that the weight reading betwen a long string and the short string were so similiar- that really helps me out alot!

I brace with the push-pull method as of late. Does this harm the tiller? I know from experience the step-through method I had been using was.

[JackCrafty]

I've seen guys brace their bows by bending one limb more than the other....and I've seen bows being braced correctly (with step though and push-pull methods).  When my kids brace their bows I just bite the bullet.  They tend to bend one limb more than the other....but I can always make another bow if needed (when it breaks).

Now that I think about it, learning to brace the bow properly is just as important as learning how to chase a ring, for example.

Kegan, thanks for posing this question.  I think this is a very good topic for discussion.