Put ebony nocks on Rudders' warbow, had to shorten a bit, chrysaling???!

[mikekeswick]

As you already know that bow is toast.
Firstly if you had to take any length off it should have been EXACTLY the same amount off both limbs.
The bow is bending way too much in the inner third. No wonder you've got chyrsals!!!
Hickory/ipe/hickory is about the worst possible combo of those woods. I don't know how this company gets any business.....
Ditch this bow and make/buy yourself a decent one!

[nineworlds9]

As you already know that bow is toast.
Firstly if you had to take any length off it should have been EXACTLY the same amount off both limbs.
The bow is bending way too much in the inner third. No wonder you've got chyrsals!!!
Hickory/ipe/hickory is about the worst possible combo of those woods. I don't know how this company gets any business.....
Ditch this bow and make/buy yourself a decent one!

Yeah, as you and Del said, I've kinda answered a lot of my own questions...

Yup thank gosh I didn't pay a new price for the dang thing.  Live and learn. 

[DarkSoul]

Well, you came to the right conclusion. Not much more to add.

On a side note, I don't think it's a smart idea to use wooden nocks like that. Have you ever seen them before? That's a good indication, because I haven't seen any succesful ones. One failure, but none came out good. There is a reason for that. Wood will split much more readily than horn. The forces the string applies to the nock, make the wood split. It just pulls the nock sideways, along the grain. The only reason you nocks survived thus far, is because you left them incredibly bulky. If you shaved them down a bit more like Del suggested, you will split the nocks in halves as soon as you brace the bow.
My suggestion for this bow would be to correct the tiller. At the moment it's agonizing to see. Correcting the tiller shouldn't take more than an hour and will greatly increase the longevity. It will still be a very mediocre bow at best, but at the moment it is just doomed to fail at one point. Also, do NOT sand those chrysals. Just remove the finish, but leave all the wood underneath. Correcting the tiller will alleviate some of the pressure from those chrysals.

[robby]

That may be the single worst tiller job I've seen on this site!!! I don't know who this Rudder guy is, but if he is offering these for sale he should know better.
Robby

[nineworlds9]

Dark and Robby-

Don't worry I only sanded through the finish and kissed the wood.  Good point about 'wood' nocks.  Yes horn would have been better.  At least it's ebony?! LoL.  Yeah I'll say even before I modified (mutilated!) the bow it left something to be desired.  But hey Im glad I bought it used (with a whopping 3 inches of set!) and paid a low price.  Before the nocks and also after the bow has a lot of hand shock.  I am going to take the advice and maybe use this one as a guinea pig/learning tool and play with tillering for the very first time.  Maybe a little hospitaling will save this one?

Yeah Rudderbows has gone underground.  They sell through 3Rivers now anonymously.  Emailed with them once, very friendly people, can't say anything bad about them personally but can't speak for others.  I can say however that my next warbow will not be 2nd hand but purchased new from Britain or better yet made by ME.

[Joec123able]

Well, you came to the right conclusion. Not much more to add.

On a side note, I don't think it's a smart idea to use wooden nocks like that. Have you ever seen them before? That's a good indication, because I haven't seen any succesful ones. One failure, but none came out good. There is a reason for that. Wood will split much more readily than horn. The forces the string applies to the nock, make the wood split. It just pulls the nock sideways, along the grain. The only reason you nocks survived thus far, is because you left them incredibly bulky. If you shaved them down a bit more like Del suggested, you will split the nocks in halves as soon as you brace the bow.
My suggestion for this bow would be to correct the tiller. At the moment it's agonizing to see. Correcting the tiller shouldn't take more than an hour and will greatly increase the longevity. It will still be a very mediocre bow at best, but at the moment it is just doomed to fail at one point. Also, do NOT sand those chrysals. Just remove the finish, but leave all the wood underneath. Correcting the tiller will alleviate some of the pressure from those chrysals.

I dont agree with Wat you said about the nocks ebony wood is very very hard I very highly doubt you would split them

[DarkSoul]

Ebony is hard in terms of specific gravity. But ebony is still wood, and has a grain. The wood fibers are running in one direction. Despite the fact that ebony is hard, is can still easily be split along the fibers. Did you ever try to spit some firewood or even whole logs? It's remarkable how easy it is to split wood, as long as the split in the longitudinal direction and not across the grain. Just because ebony is hard, doesn't mean it can't be split. You should try splitting an ebony log, just to prove my fact.
Horn doesn't have such a clear grain running in one direction. It still has somewhat of a grain, but is much, much more 'interlocked' so to speak. Splitting horn is ten times more difficult than splitting wood (/ebony).

[Joec123able]

Yep that is true I will not argue that but if you make the nocks with the grain running a specific way then it makes it alot harder to split I've never after years had a wood nock split on me it's usually dependent on which way the grain runs that determines how easy it will split

[toomanyknots]

If hickory is such a bad belly wood, why is it working for me anymore? I guess I might of got a really good piece or something,... ? With 100# or so, I have been getting only about an 1" of set. Now of course an inch is still not super duper great, (and of course the example of this bow in this thread obviously ain't great for hickorys rep) but it seems to work alot better than other woods I have used, and in my book, an inch is just fantastic for a 100# bow. I am curious, to all you other bowyers out there that have actual experience with each wood in longbow and warbow design, how would you rank each wood in compression: hickory, ash, white oak, curly maple, birdseye maple... I have heard (from alanesq's pdf) that ash will chrysal after 100# or so. And I have read on here over and over that hickory will and will not make a heavy warbow. What is the deal yall? 

[nineworlds9]

Joe/Dark-  for reference I checked the nocks...fella who initially made em in roughed out form did indeed carve em with grain going longitudinally, grain parallel to bow.

As for hickory belly, it may not be taking the strain if this botched nock job haha very well, but at least it hasn't broken yet.  I keep measuring the set and it hasn't grown..it was 3" when I got the bow at 76" and still 3" now that its 72" and jacked up LoL

[twilightandmist]

never did like the rudderbows warbow anyway. i have seen some that bent so little in the outer halves of the limbs, i could almost swear they were lever tips. all the same, piking down the limbs probably didnt help, but if its any consolation, there was already a problem there anyway, so it isnt entirely your fault.

[adb]

Hickory, ash, maple, white oak... those are all tension strong backing woods. None of them make really good belly wood IMHO. Hickory/ipe/hickory is a horrible tri-lam combo for a warbow. Hickory backed ipe, however, is a whole 'nother story!

And no, I have NOTHING good to say about Jim Boswell and Rudderbows. The tiller on this bow is horrible for a warbow. Been stung badly in the past... don't get me started. I'll just leave it.

[Dane]

Jim strikes again! Interesting that rudderbows seems on the down low. I think woodland archery is related in some way? They have one bow on the site, a plains Indian bow, that they actually recommend as a home defense weapon as a firearms alternative. And I think Justin Seinmetz (Jim's kid or stepkid) went amoke. Internet fraud, arrested maybe, ripping off customers left and right, all kinds of things. His Army service was even in question. Strange stuff.

[Ian.]

Is that going to be made into a movie at some point?

[adb]

Great reality TV! There's more bizarre stuff on right now!