I am new at bowmaking and primitive archery in general. I have been working on a few bows and the first one is at the shooting stage. This locust stave was a left-over split, narrow and full of defects. It has a big knot in the middle of one limb, a chunk torn out of the side of another limb when splitting, close to the handle. I had to work it down to quite thin to resolve the knot in the limb, so I piked (shortened) the bow and got it to about 26 pounds at 24" draw and gave it to my wife. It's not perfectly tillered (the picture makes it look worse than it is as I have the stick holding it at draw, not on center) but it's a whippy little bow, pretty fast for the pull weight, shooting shafts made of goldenrod stalks. It should be a fun plinking bow I may borrow to plunk squirrels and rabbits. It's super light. Mainly this one is giving me confidence I can make a shootable bow. The tiller is pretty far off (one limb has a hinge started and the other is stiffer) but I hesitate to work it more, afraid to make it even lighter draw weight. It was a quicky bow. Once I saw how bad the knot was on the belly I just went for it to see if I could remove the huge lump. It went from rough-shaped stave to shooter in about 6 hours. I am going much more slowly on the other 4 bows I have in progress (long ash, a black locust, a hickory and an osage orange).
I was amazed how well it bends with dry heat when the wood is thin. I'll get some better pix; these were in a hurry before work and not well focused and too contrasty.
