Thank you George
!
Backing saves alot of so-so bows, but if tapered/tillered properly, and left sit at least 8 hours, even so-so grain will hold (so long as all run offs are 15" distant). I recently snapped a beautiful Andaman-Holmegaard flatbow because I started stressing the bow too quickly, instead of letting it sit at 4" brace for an hour or so before raising brace height to 6". However, the grain was much better than on the two D bows, which were given ALOT of time. Here's a brief overview of my tillering stages with board bows and the occasional stave bow:
-Floor tiller carefully, make sure the limbs are at least close, and definately have no weak spots
-Brace to 4" (no tillering stick/tree used) and clean up tiller
-Let sit for at least 1 hour. A poor taper/tiller will revela itself, so watch it. If the taper is good, it will keep the look of a properly tillered bow.
-Raise the brace hieght to 6", and again clean up tiller
-Let sit overnight at least. The tiller shouldn't need monitoring, but if there is a weak spot in the taper, you're going to have a hinge. So avoid them.
-After about 8-24 hours of breaking in, tiller the bow to full draw however you care to. I use a tillering stick, because I don't have a proper tree.
This method will help prvent fractures with weaker woods, and will yeild a bow that won't lose alot of weight, if any at all, even after 500 shots. The downside is, this bow must not be taken down in weight- so you have to have a really good idea of what weight certain dimensions are going to give you. The weapon can be piked of course, but lightenning will yield a bow with weaker, flabby cast that would simply dissapoint.
