Osage Mollegabet (sneak peak on pg. 3)

[Weylin]

Thanks Gus. I'm getting really excited about mine. I have it strung and at a normal brace. the tiller is looking good so far but it's still pretty stout. The levers still need some work to get them nice and skinny. Blackhawk's been helping me out with some dimensions. Unfortunately I have to take a break from the bow for a week or so while I finish up (read as start) my Master's thesis. It's torture because the bow is getting to the most exciting part of the process and it's just sitting there staring at me, begging me to tiller it to full draw. Maybe I'll heat in the reflex that I was going to add and then I'll have to leave it alone for a while.

[Gus]

Haha...

I hear ya Weylin... Too bad you couldn't work "Tillering The Wooden Bow" into your Master's Thesis...   

How narrow are you gonna shoot for on your levers?

My levers are a tad over a 1/2 inch now, with a semi Octagonal cross section.
And they are about 9/16 inch thick.

-gus

[Carson (CMB)]

Weylin, glad to see you got that thing to brace., sounds like it has come a long way since I saw it last week.  Looking forward to seeing it finished. So you are going to start and finish your thesis in a week?  Whatever you do, make it quick so we can see some finished pics of this bow! 

[Weylin]

I heated some reflex into it tonight. it ended up being a little more than I had intended, about 3". I hope it's not too much, I know this design is under a fair amount of strain already. Maybe some of it will pull out anyway. If nothing else heating up the limbs like that will keep my hands off it for a couple days so I can get my papers done.

CMB, I was up at Wylden's on sunday doing a sweat lodge and working on bows. I got a lot done on this guy out there. Man, that sweat lodge kicked my @$$. I'm not sure I'm cut out for that business, that was a long, hot 2 1/2 hours.

[Youngboyer2(billyf)]

That looks like a nice east Osage stave to start chasing rings on

-Billy

[Weylin]

Well. I've got it bending. My eye is not used to looking at a molle bending so I'm not sure if I like it or not. Please give me your opinion of the tiller. At rest  it has about 1 3/4" reflex which goes down to about 1 1/4" after being worked. Because I'm me, the bow is upside down in all of the pictures.  keep that in mind because the top limb is 2" longer than the bottom limb (but opposite in the pics) I've looked through a bunch of Molle full draw pics on the site here and have noticed some variation in tiller shape. Some seem to bend more near the handle and others seem to have a more even bend through the working area. Any advice is welcome.

[Bryce]

upper limb looking a tad stiff

[DarkSoul]

Doesn't look half bad! You'll be fine. I agree that the upper limb in the pictures appears a bit stiff.
I personally think a limb length difference of 2" is a bit too much. It'll make tillering nuisance. You could cut off one inch of tip length from the longer limb maybe?

I also spot some redundant wood past the string groove in the lower limb. This wood is basically just dead weight. It's fine for now, but as soon as you want to start shooting in this bow, you'd better remove this wood since it'll influence her shooting behaviour.
The stiff levers also appears massive. How wide are they? I can only judge the thickness from the pictures, but they appear too thick. Again, this is not a problem for now, but a mollegabet benefits the most from well balanced tips. Excess tip weight negates any of the typical benefits you would expect from a molly.

[blackhawk]

Yup get that upper limb loosened up. The best bend distribution for a molly is to get it bending evenly from fade of the hanlde to the fade of the lever. Some peole get stuck getting most of there bend by the fade of the handle,which is a big no no with this design. Osage can take that but any other wood won't and will fret and end up taking more set,and ends up having a bunch of dead moving mass. In my opinion mollys are easy to tiller cus you only have a really short working limb length to scrape and tiller,and you just make the working limbs look like arcs of a circle making sure it bends the same amount thru out the whole working limb.

And now that you know where your string tracking lays you can glue some tip overlays on and make a reduction in your levers.

[Weylin]

Thanks for the input, Bryce, Darksoul and Blackhawk. Since the top limb in the picture is really the bottom limb on the bow  and it is shorter it should appear a bit stiffer. Now that I think about how I layout my bows it is really only an inch difference in the length, not 2, my mind was playing tricks on me.  Right now when I measure the string from the belly at brace there is about a 1/8" difference which is what I was taught that it should be. I feel like i need to be careful because my tendency is to make the lower limb too weak given its relative shortness.

As for the levers and tips,  don't have them worked down all the way yet. I plan to have them as tiny as possible and still keep them safe. right now they are about 7/8" thick and 1/2" wide, still too bulky for shooting but fine for tillering the working limbs. Sorry, I feel like I'm making excuses for all of your advice, I try not to be that guy.

I'll loosen up the top limb in the picture a bit and pull her a little further and see how she looks. And I'll start reducing those levers. The string is tracking almost perfectly down the levers and the handle. I've marked the side of each lever to leave alone and I think I can correct the minuscule discrepancy in alignment by reducing the levers only on one side.

Thanks 

[Weylin]

I braced the bow tonight and started bending it a little and I heard a tick. I cursed,  unstrung it immediately and found the culprit.  It's a splinter on the back of the bow about 2 1/2" below the fade on the bottom limb. it is 3/8" across and 1" long. I lightly traced it with a pencil so it would be visible in the picture. Is this something that I can safely fix or this bow done? Any advice would be most welcome.

[JW_Halverson]

Super thin super glue and a sinew wrap is it's best hope at this point.  The regular gel type glue will not wick down deep enough, you gotta use the super thin stuff.  And give it several applications until you are more than sure that the crack has been filled. 

Looking at the crack, I cannot understand just what allowed the Imps of Destruction a fingerhold on that limb.  Your back looked good and clean!  Dang those Imps.

[PEARL DRUMS]

Rawhide is the only sure answer. You will never hear from the back again if you apply it.

[Weylin]

Hmm, superglue and sinew or rawhide... I have some sinew, not sure how much I'll need to wrap that up well enough. I'd have to buy some rawhide or trade for it. It needs to be thinner stuff like goat or deer, correct?

what do you use to glue the rawhide down with? I have some hide glue and also some TB3.


 I was hoping to decorate the back so I'm trying to figure out which of these methods will interfere less with the drawings. I'm not a fan of how rawhide on a bow looks but I guess I could just draw/paint right over the rawhide. Ultimately I need to go with whatever makes the crack safer because there's not much point in decorating a broken bow.

Are there any other pros and cons of these two methods that I'm not considering? This is uncharted territory for me. I've never tried to repair a crack before.

[JW_Halverson]

Hide glue, TB 1-2-3, or elmer's wood glue will work with the rawhide. 

As for sinew wrap, about half of a backstrap sinew would do the job.