Primitive Archer

   Wood is not really suitable for highly reflexed bows. The reason is because a highly reflexed bow has to have very short working areas to maintain any kind of stability and wood will either break or take too much set if it doesn't have enough working limb. Look at the modern Asiatic bows, they have very short working areas. Your desing has to be able to tolerate the materials you are using.

     I would deflex the handle. It would be very unstable with all that reflex

What he says 
Plus, with that much reflex, it will be hell's own job to brace it, and then it may end up under weight because it's been worked down so much just to brace it.
Del

Hey everyone!

Finished up another bow the last one of a set of 4 adult bows from an American Red oak board. The board so far has yielded 4 bows with 4 additional kids bows in the works.

The bow is 68" long and is the first bow where I've incorporated the TBB mass principle the bow ended up being 19oz. right on the money. I learned from my previous heat treatments and managed to slowly and gently cook the limbs resulting in very little set so far. The bows limbs are 2 inches wide at the fades for a little over half the limb before tapering to 1/2" nocks. I shot for an elliptical tiller and believe I pulled it off.

The handle is brain tanned buckskin created by my brother with NZ possum fur string dampeners.

Cheers guys

And tiller slowly, Pierce.     No problem there--this thing is so snaky I think I'm going to do most of the tillering with a cabinet scraper.

Definitely do not take sinew off. If you need to make it bend more just take more wood off the belly very slowly. It is very very easy to remove too much wood when tillering a high reflex juniper bow. Once you get past that snap back point the bow doesnt have as much draw weight as you think. Thats actually one of the things that makes sinew backed juniper bows so darn powerful haha. Kinda straightens the draw weight curve out a bit.