How much wood do you remove?

[DC]

Hand sanding, Pat, or would you use an orbital or something?

[PatM]

Just hand sanding with the sheet held flattish across my palm.

[mmattockx]

I was just counting my trips to the tree, 'cos my guess is that a lot of newbies don't do enough checking or exercising the bow.

I would guess you are correct. It is super hard to patiently take a few scrapes, then check it, then a few more, etc.

In my vids, I just show how I do it... I'm always at pains to say there are other ways, gotta find what works for you

I wasn't criticizing, just wondering what I was missing regarding counting trips to the tree. I think I would get depressed realizing how many times I went back and forth from the bench to the tree. There surely are dozens of ways to skin most of these cats.

When you are scraping what do you hold the bow with? A bench vice?  When the bow is in the vice(or what ever) can you get at both sides? Do you, or do you do all your scraping from one side?

I missed this one earlier. I don't have a vise in my wood shop, I clamp the bow down to the top of my bench so that I can scrape from the end of the bench with a straight pull from the handle to the tip while standing at the tip. I still have to be extremely careful to not scrape in a side to side taper. On my last bow I found it very helpful to use a set of calipers to measure the thickness as I scraped, marking high spots and areas to leave alone. The pros can laugh at that, but it made it a lot easier for me to not screw up an area with my inexperience.


Mark

[dylanholderman]

DC for keeping track of how much wood i remove i draw diagonal lines across the entire area that i'm removing from, once my pencil marks are gone i stop.

[Del the cat]

I use a scraper I made out of an old circular saw blade. It is thick enough it doesn't bend at all, unlike a regular card scraper. Instead of a bend, I put a radius on one edge (the edge has an arc to it instead of a straight line) and it presents to the wood very similar to the card scraper when it is bent a bit. Mine is way easier on the fingers because all I have to do is drag it on the wood instead of forcing the bend at the same time.

Mark

I like that... I have regular card scrapers and one of those curved ones shaped like a comma. Your heavy duty slightly curved one sounds like a good move
Del

[mutt]

How can I find this video by del? I'm tillering a bow now and it might be helpful to me

[DC]

http://bowyersdiary.blogspot.com/
Go right back to the beginning and read the whole blog. You won't regret it

[scp]

I go to the carbide goose-neck scraper often immediately after the band saw for most of flat bows. I do 50 strokes each limb and check the tiller. Once stringed, I even use the scraper while the stringed bow is held belly up in a woodworking vise in the tillering tree. I know most experts here are against scraping the bow while stringed. But this way I can easily check the tiller after just one scrape, if I want. But at the final tillering stage, I prefer to shoot the bow several times after more than a few scrapes. At this stage I will probably be using a detail sander instead, really carefully on the stringed bow.

[DC]

Thanks for all the advice. I used the sandpaper. 25 strokes on each limb got me about 3/8 to 1/2" of DL each trip to the tree. Slowed me down enough that I got it to 42@28 and the tiller looks good. I had one spot that looked a little hingey but since I was going slow I caught it in plenty of time. The last 3 or 4" went nice and smooth. With 42# I've still got room to fix anything that comes up. And the good news. Solid, scale on pounds, arrow weight double checked, draw length of bow and release trigger on the machine checked. 204fps@10gpp repeated 10 times, with a bunch of 203's as backup.

[mmattockx]

And the good news. Solid, scale on pounds, arrow weight double checked, draw length of bow and release trigger on the machine checked. 204fps@10gpp repeated 10 times, with a bunch of 203's as backup.

Outstanding, congrats. That is amazing for a wood bow, especially doing it repeatedly with no drop off in performance.


Mark

[DC]

Thanks Mark. We'll see what happens in the next few days. It's been rainy the last few days, I wonder if sticking it in the hot box would make much difference? i guess the 10gpp is the big leveller though.

[scp]

And the good news. Solid, scale on pounds, arrow weight double checked, draw length of bow and release trigger on the machine checked. 204fps@10gpp repeated 10 times, with a bunch of 203's as backup.

Congratulations. Historic achievement.

Do you mind telling us all about the bow (mainly specs) once more here? I do not follow all your threads all the time. I also like to know a little more about your shooting machine. Thanks.

[PatM]

That's great.  I think the original 200fps challenge was just for a pure self bow though.

[willie]

I think Don just needs some more time for that. Most FG guys would be very proud of 200+ 

[mmattockx]

Most FG guys would be very proud of 200+ 

Especially at 10GPP, most of them seem to test at 8-9GPP at the highest.


Mark