
I started this bow over a year ago. It’s a very crooked piece of Rocky Mountain maple that I roughed out but couldn’t get straight enough to string without it turning inside out. After wrestling with it for a couple weeks, I finally got sick of it and put it away for a year. Got it back out the other day, steamed the daylights out of the main kink, got it pretty straight and stuck some pronghorn rawhide on it so it won’t explode when I start bending it. Going to make a very cool bow if it doesn’t break. (And yes, I say that about every bow I make haha)
So here's the bizarre thing: It looks like one limb has a lot of reflex, and the other a lot of deflex. There is no chance of steam bending the limbs to even them out without putting all the sideways kinks back in. So it is what it is.
But can you see how the handle is right in a big crook? When I put it in the tillering tree, compensating for that crook to put the handle at the angle it naturally wants to be held, the limb tips are actually pretty even. I'll take a picture on the tree later to show you what I mean.
How in the world would you tillering this thing?