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Meare Heath bow

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bassman211:
Or used as a double paddle. Any way after many hours of tillering I finished it up this evening. I put a finish on it, and all that is left to do is the leather work. Bow turned out 40lb at 26 inches of draw.  Really thin limbs. If the weather is nice enough tomorrow morning I will shoot through the chrony to check the speed of the bow. If nothing else if I do a good job with the leather  work it will be a nice conversation piece. Hope it doesn't give me tennis elbow, or rattle what few teeth I have left out of my noggin. What ever the results I am glad I made this style of bow just for the experience. Bob,

WhistlingBadger:
Well, we're going to have to see some pictures!  I'll be interested to hear how it shoots.  A lot of the Native American bow designs in the TBB are similar--wide limbs and not a lot of taper to the tips.  Honestly some of them look like they'd be just awful to shoot...but the Natives seem to have done OK with them, so there must be something good in the design.  If not smooth and easy shooting, durability maybe?  Maybe we'll be surprised and it will be smooth as butter and fast as greased lightning.  If not, you learned something and that's never a waste of time.  Looking forward to hearing about it.

bassman211:
This morning it was 30 degrees with no wind. I finished the leather work on the bow last night, and served the string, so I set the chrony up , and shot the bow. I shot it at 40 lbs. at 25 inches of draw, and shot through the chrony at a blazing 130 fps. with a  390 gr arrow. It has hand shock, but not as bad as I was expecting. It has 1 inch of set. The bow weighs in at 32 ounces. You could kill with it, but performance is sub par. Not a good design for speed to say the least which I didn't think it would be. It was fun to build, and shoot ,so no regrets. Guys at my club will be aw struck with it's size, and get a charge out of shooting it. Bob.

bassman211:
To be fair I would also like to say a 75 inch bow won't show much in the way of speed with a 25 inch draw at 40 lbs. This same bow at the same poundage drawn to 28 to 30 inches would show better performance. I nock an arrow at the corner of my mouth. I don't think the English shot that way, and they may have made this bow more towards 70 to 100 lbs which may have served them well with a heavier arrow for hunting , or in combat. In any event the bow remains an enigma, so this may all be conjecture.

WhistlingBadger:
Interesting!  Always fun when something turns out better than expected.  If it's fun to shoot, that's good enough!

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