Exercising bow during tillering?

[Badger]

AD,  if you floor tiller a bow and then flip it around till you can't tell the difference when you flip it, it will be even when you brace it. If you are making a 50# bow you know what 50# bows allready feel like. I have gone from floor tiller to full draw on many occassions. Not saying it is bad cause I still do it also but if you have to excersize a limb to get the shape to settle in the bow even if you can't see it. There is a method of monitoring  the condition of your wood, you can excersize it as little or as much as you want and it should not have any affect either way. I can explain it further if you like, it's very simple.

[artcher1]

I'm another one of those that don't exercise the limbs to any great extent during the building process. As Paul Comstock wrote in his book "The Bent Stick", good tapering produces good tillering. Achieve good tapering right off the bat and and there will be no hinges, flat/high spots to deal with. With only weight reduction to worry about I can bring a bow in rather quick and most times on weight. -ART B

[adb]

Hmmmm... I think I'll still use my tiller tree, and exercise the limbs between scrapes. I'm in no hurry. Maybe I'll give floor tillering a bit more thorough look. The thing for me with floor tillering is, I have a hard time seeing the limb bending. Do you guys stand in front of a mirror, or get someone else to watch while you flex the limbs?

[Eric Krewson]

I exercise my limbs a little between the long and short string. When I am satisfied with the tiller at about 20" I start shooting a dozen arrows at less than a 20" draw between scrapings. I also end a tillering session for the day by leaving a bow strung for 3 or 4 hrs. My bows turn out pretty good so I guess I will keep doing what I have done in the past.

[George Tsoukalas]

I remove wood and exercise the bow with short pulls 20-30 times after each wood removal session.  Easy does it. Gentle as a lamb. Just enough for the change to register. In my younger days I'd play catch up. Correct one limb. Work on the other only to have the original  register its cahnge. I'm not sure I understand the rationale behind not exercising the bow between removal sessions. I'd rather have changes show up early on than later on. They're going to show up eventually. Jawge

[Pappy]

I do it about like Jawges ,Not as much if I am working with clean straight wood but I am
usually working with snaky ,knotty wood and if you don't work it ,sometimes you will get
a surprise you won't like. I do it slow and easy also out to where I was in Draw before I
took off wood,if all looks good I gradually go another inch or so,I keep this up till I get to full
draw never going over the weight I am looking for. I also do like David,I tiller in short sessions
usually out to 10 or 12 inches then give it a break then to about 20 and then full draw.
   Pappy

[islandpiper]

I wonder if there is a room big enough, or a bar long enough, to allow all of us to sit down and trade all these good ideas (as different as they are) face to face.  Now, wouldn't that be an adventure.   Everybody showing off all their bows and tools and ideas.   Well, till then, we'll have to settle for pecking these keys and trading ideas. 

piper

[DanaM]

I wonder if there is a room big enough, or a bar long enough, to allow all of us to sit down and trade all these good ideas (as different as they are) face to face.  Now, wouldn't that be an adventure.   Everybody showing off all their bows and tools and ideas.   Well, till then, we'll have to settle for pecking these keys and trading ideas. 

piper

Actually I do believe badger plans on opening a bowyers coffe shop when he retires

Fascinating how people do things so differently

[George Tsoukalas]

As long as Badger has Dietrich's Paradiso in a k cup, I'm there ! Jawge

[Badger]

Jawge, if I get this coffee shop put together like I plan I will fly you our here for the grand opening and give you a free cup of Deitricks Paradiso! But I would probably put you to work with newbes once you got here so it may not be as good of a deal as it sounds, LOL. 

[DCM]

Further to what has been written, I like to sweat a bow by leaving it braced, versus using the tillering tree and only after I feel like the tiller is pretty much done.  Also like Eric I want to work the bow more by shooting than by using the tree.  While we describe what we do differently, I bet we all do pretty much similar things.  Trial and error has a tendancy to shake out the riff-raff ideas and techniques and leave the effective stuff.

[JW_Halverson]

For now I will stick with the 'scrape a little, excercise a lot' school of bowmaking. I am a poor judge of floor tillering since I am still fairly new at this, only about 30 or so bows under my belt.  I can certainly see aiming for the 'floor tiller to full draw' method, though.  Lignin fibers fail after a certain about of flexing, and just how much flexing they will take in their life is beyond my ability to foresee...ergo, excercising could lead to earlier failure or less efficiency.   

I'd be willing to bet a good 50% of my time in making any bow is taken up with head scratching and staring at the wood, either on the bench or on the tillering tree.  Maybe someday I will be able to speed up the process and crank bows out in no time at all...but that may ruin some of the wonderous mystery I feel in the wood. 

Looking forward to seeing all of you at the bowyer's coffee bar, I'll be the one drinking the Full Draw Espresso.

[Badger]

As long as the tiller on a bow is good it certainly won't hurt the bow to excersize it. Idealy it won't make any difference. If you check the poundage on your bow at a certain benchmark say 20" before excersizing and then check it again at the same benchmark after exercizing you want it to read the same. If it reads the same the excersize likely did no harm. When I am going for a high performance bow I watch the weight at my benchmarks like a hawk and let that determine how I tiller the bow as far as how much working limb I use and how close to the handle I get it bending. Steve

[redwasp]

badger, I would love for you to explain your technique further please. You can PM me if nobody else is interested. I love to see the way other bowyers differ in the method they use, because I like to experiment to improve performance especially in the archer (me). Someone may have a better or easier way to achieve the same performance. In my case I have used both exercizing limbs alot, and exercizing as little as possible IMO it comes down to the confidence you have in the quality of the stave and the imperfections in the wood.  richard

[willie]

So I am looking back over some old threads to see if folks have changed their thinking about exercising while tillering and found this and other interesting comments.

Otherwise you might end up like I did on my last bow. I had a perfectly tillered 63#@28" longbow. the outer end of the lower limb might have been a tad to stiff. After 100 shots, the exact spot that was stiff is developing int0o0 a hinge. Excersising is necessary to detect such a spot.