Back to the Drawing Board

[mmattockx]

I’ve seen a lot of self bowyers do their tillering before they put backing on the bow. What’s your philosophy on this procedure?

Depends on the backing. If it's snake skins or something else light it won't change the tiller much if any. The guys doing sinew bows also get them bending pretty good before adding the sinew, but that is something I have never tried so I can't say. Any time I have backed a bow it's been because I was worried about a limb failing so I have always added the backing before I bent it very far.

I’ve also read a bit on exercising the limbs to stabilize compression during the tiller process. I’d be interested in your thoughts on this too.

On wood bows exercising the limbs after every change is necessary to see what the true bend is like and to be able to accurately measure the draw weight at that point. Even on my wood lam bows I don't just pull them to full draw immediately, I work them out in stages on the tillering tree to check the bend and tweak anything if necessary.


Mark