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Yew Recurve Build-Along

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High-Desert:
Now I can really get into tiller. I like to use my bench vise to look at how the limbs are bending. This is basically floor tillering minus the floor, although I do both. This method is really nice for highly reflexed staves like Vine Maple.

High-Desert:
Im getting a pretty good and even bend out the limbs, so I clean up my tips, getting them rounded and string grooves in place. Which I forgot to get pictures of. Its bending enough to get a string on it. I usually don't do much of a low brace. I get it bending where I think it should be, whatever that means, and go to about a 5" brace. It really depends on the string I have available. It looks pretty even at first brace.

Danzn Bar:
This is cool …...enjoying this!
DBar

High-Desert:
I hook it up and pull a few light pulls to see how she looks. (I didn't ask if it was a she, I'm assuming because the tree had berries. So go with the biological definition). Anyway, when I get it pulling even, I put it on the tiller stick, sitting on a bathroom scale and begin pulling to my desired final draw weight. I don't really trust cheap bathroom scales, so i calibrate them with something that is close to my desired draw weight, in this case, a 53lb Kettlebell. I place the KB on the scale with tiller board and stave (not a bow yet), and set scale to 53lbs. And this is what she looks like at 14". it looks pretty even at this point.
I will attempt to do the no set tillering method from here on out. Im having a feeling that I may have to drop a bit from my desired 50lb-55lb draw.

High-Desert:
I took these last few posts photos over the last week and my phone was having issues taking photos, storage full or something like that, so I missed the middle of the tillering stage. But I did try the no set method. I used 16" as my reference point to start with. After each wood removal, I pulled to 16" and took note of the weight, then exercised 50 times at 55lbs, then remeasured at 16". I did this each time, moving my reference point out to where it read around 46-48lbs, taking note of that measurement, then pulling 50 times again, and rechecking at the reference. I did this to about 24" draw and noticed very little change in my measurement but noticed some set in the limbs after taking the string off. Im not sure why this would be, but I decided to go ahead with heat treating the limbs again as I did before, but this time, where the wood took on the slightest brown color, just barely noticeable. I went back to tillering. After heat treating, it gained back quite a bit of poundage, so I was back to about 23" at 55lbs. The same thing happened again, took noticeable set. So I heat treated again, and decided to go for a target weight of 45lbs. This was much better. Now its coming in 45lbs at 23" after heat treating and retillering.
I build an arrow that I use for taking pictures of the bow drawn by hand that has painted lines of it that represent draw length since I can never see hand written inch marks. It's easier than placing tape at the draw length the bow is at, and pulling to it, and constantly changing it.

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