I hope this helps. I felt that the wood was bending too much near the fades because I thought that narrow-thick handled, wide limbed bows like this needed to be stiff in the middle and bend at the mid-limbs. I probably didn't word that well, but this doesn't look like the tiller examples in TBB vol I to me. As for the type of wood, this is a hickory-backed red elm board stave I glued up, my bow's dimensions are 66" long, handle is 1" wide, it has a width of 1 7/8" at mid-limb where it tapers to 1/2" nocks, initially I started with a thickness of 3/4" but it was taking a long, long time to floor tiller that thing and I could not get it to bend in the lower limb, it wanted to bend near the handle, so after 2 hours of this, I made a gamble and decided to taper the stave's thickness from 3/4" just off the fades to 5/8" at mid-limb, to 3/8" at the tips and I was finally able to get it to bend more in the middle and lower limb instead of near the handle. The two bows I made before this barely needed floor tillering because I made them from dimensions off an artifact. The problem with that approach is it is hard to reach a specific draw weight and I wanted this to be a 55 lb draw bow. I don't know if I'll reach that now, but I've heard to hit a specific draw weight its easier to make a bow heavy, make the tiller right, get your draw length, and then you can remove wood to reach your draw weight if need be. If I'm wrong in any of this (I probably am) please tell me.
Thanks,
Aaron