How to tiller a banana bow

[Terry Riley]

Cooter,
       You're doing a great job so far. Gotta admire a guy who'll try just about anything. I'm pulling for you man....I wanna see the string on that dude.
Terry

['46]

Calvin:  ..."Cooter, that second pic put a big ole smile on my face!!!! ON THE CARPET!!!! I am gonna show "her" that picture when she gets home!!!"

HA!!! MPS!, we are all here rank amatures next to Cooter when it comes to building bows in the living room, raising the wrath of "Her" and avoiding death.

I've seen that boy attack, with vigor, monster staves...in the house...WITH AN ANGLE GRINDER.        Now that's serious dust  :D  

He only is alive today because of her great compassion  

geo

[John Scifres]

Cooter,

Man that is awesome.  You've gone a lot farther on that thing than I would have even tried.  Stay with it.  You are an inspiration :-)

John

[Jason Jelinek]

Cooter,

You're first problem is that Bison sweatshirt... You've got to wear a Sioux sweatshirt tillering a sinew backed bow.  

Seriously, you should have put siyahs on the ends and horn on the belly when you tackle something with that much reflex.  I've gotten to the point where I don't like any glued in reflex, I'll take the set.  I've found that the limb thickness taper is very different on my reflexed bows than those with no glued in reflex.

Good luck with that bow, although I think you might find that the handle area may not be stiff enough by the time you get to full draw.

Jason

['46]

Cooter, joking aside...thats some serious  reflex. Good job on the sinew. Looking forward to following your progress.

I can't get together this weekend, but would really like to see it in person maybe the next week. I'll call ya later.

[Chris R]

Originally posted by George Nagel:
I've seen that boy attack, with vigor, monster staves...in the house...WITH AN ANGLE GRINDER.           Now that's serious dust   :D  

LMAO      Man, I'd be living in the garage if I did that.

Chris

[cooter]

Ralph,
Thanks for the kind words. I'm actually speachless if you can beleive that. I'm not use to being talked to like this and think its shocking my system    

Jason,
I've thought about that a lot. I have no idea how much compression osage can handle and have got to beleive these tips are going to need to travel some where between 20 to 24 inches before I reach draw length, which I'm sure is going to put the belly under tremendous compression stresses. As for the handle, I wanted a bow that was bendy in the handle to help distribute some of the limb stresses. What has yet to be defined is how much is it going to bend in the handle. I was thinking if the handle got too bendy, I'd put a flat spot in the handle with the bench sander and glue on another hunk of osage for added strength. Then again I'm not sure how much I want too push my luck with this bow.  

Chris,
Yep she already has double nocks and the sinew is thicker on the back side of that limb, thus its desire to want to twist. I'm going to be sanding some but am afraid I'll still be needing to add a touch of sinew to the twisting side of the limb tip. I think I may have missed a spot with a couple courses of sinew there's that much visual differance between the sinew thickness of those two edges. If you know what I mean.

George,
You know I did the angle grinding on that osage in the basement bathroom and with both doors closed. It wasn't my fault the construction crew that built our house didn't make that room air tight like it should have been to begin with     So it's their fault our house took on a unique shade of yellow on the inside. I liked it but since ma didn't so I had to vacuum it up. Man, there's no satisfying her    Tell you what, I'll keep my Saturdays open for the next few weeks and when it works out give me a shout and we'll make a day of it.

Cooter  

PS No more banana bow insight till this twist has been corrected. I will keep everyone updated if the's going to need some more sinew

[cooter]

He he, I wrestled this bow for a couple hours after work tonight and for the time being persueded her to give up her twist. As Chris suggested, I sanded the sinew with some 80 grit sandpaper on the stong side. I'll be flexing her on the floor and on my tillering tree contraption with the bricks so I can watch that limb bend and look for twisting in the opposite direction. Hope I haven't over corrected the twist and she starts twisting the opposite direction now.

BTW, out of curiosity what does the lightest bow weigh that you own and what is its draw weight? Right now this bow weighs in at 420gram or roughly 14.4 ounces. Man, I hope this bow survives to fling some arrows and doesn't develop compression fractures.

Thanks again everyone for your support,
Cooter

[Ralph Renfro]

Cooter, what is the thickness of the sinew and the thickness of the limbs?  Normally I wouldn't worry bout compression with Bodark for a core, but if you overpower the Core with too much sinew, you could have problems.  

[cooter]

Jason,
With regards to that sweatshirt, it's good karma where do you think the best sinew comes from? a Bison or a Souix    We won't ask how many national football championships the Souix won when I was in attendance between '83 and '86.

Ralph,
 
In the fade area the sinew is between 4-5mm while the wood is around 12-14, at the tips the sinew is 2-3mm while thw wood is 10-12mm. Don't know if that will help anyone answer my compression issue question of a post or two ago.

Well, here's another pic for those that are interested. I wanted to keep the limbs as horizontal as possible when my 6 yr old took the picture. They were pretty close. Anyway from the pic, at least to myself the tiller looks as even as I could get it for now. What do you think? and please no BS give it to me as you see it if you see something I don't. I need as much help as I can get with this baby.

Thanks,
Cooter


 

[LoneWolf]

Looks like it is coming down good a traight.  You have more guts than I man, I woul dhave sanded the sides flat and made a boomerang out of that one.  That and I have to dust all the yellow off outside, wife doesn't even want to see it in the house.
Keep up the good work man

[Hackbow]

Cooter.....you're taking this further than most would dare. Congrats on getting this far and thanks for sharing it all with us.    

The only thing I could even think to point out to you is on both limbs, 10-12" in from the nocks it looks like a POSSIBILITY of early hinge development. On the left limb it right about where the stave crosses in front of the little Christmas tree and on the right limb it's just to the right of the moose lamp. It seems to me that if you don't keep the whole limb working perfectly together, that any weaker area will want to let go when you start a serious draw.

I have no experience with anything even resembling this, so take it for what it's worth. Good Luck!!!

[the Ferret]

...On the left limb it right about where the stave crosses in front of the little Christmas tree and on the right limb it's just to the right of the moose lamp... (Hackbow)

Don't hear that on this forum very often    

[cooter]

Hackbow,

Thanks for pointing that out. I took a closer look at that last pic and your right, it does look like the begining of a pair a hinge's. I'll take that into consideration tomarrow when I do some more scraping. With luck maybe I'll them limbs bending in the right direction    

Thanks again for pointing those two spots out to me,
Cooter

[cooter]

He's my most recent pic. She's starting to turn now, please cratique the tiller so far. Left limb is the bottom limb while the right limb is the top limb as your looking at the picture. Is it me or does the bottom limb look stiff from the handle to maybe midlimb with maybe a small hinge forming in that limb in the center of the far left X-mas tree? BTW, its time to start tightening up that tillering string or she will end up whip tillered I beleive.

Please if you read this give me some input,

Thanks,
Cooter
 

[the Ferret]

Dang Cooter your whipping it's butt boy! I'm not so sure that it's stiff on the left coming out of the handle as much as it is weak on the right. Regardless you are going to have to weaken the left to keep them together. Keep an eye on that. Actually considering what you started with you are doing wonderfully.

[Chris R]

Looking great      I'd go with what Ferret said.  Be careful when she comes around, she'll come quick.  I've got to hand it to you, I'd have thrown it in the "I"ll get back to it" pile a long time ago.

Chris

[DCM]

Looks excellent Cooter.  How much weight to get that deflection?

Very minor stuff at this point but it looks soft at the red mark and flat at the green.

Looks like the nocks are flipped up a little?

 http://home.midsouth.rr.com/ddmims/sb.JPG

[cooter]

Thanks for the help guys. I realy appreciate it.

DCM,
Your right those tips are flipped up. The first time I sinewed this bow(third time now) I wanted to make a static recurve so I put 3" of both tips into maybe an inch or so of recurving. Now with out realizing how much reflex this thing was going to take I'm not to sure that I'm glad I did that. Oh well, Too late now to worry about that. Anyway, when I put the sinew on I did a sinew wrap at those bends to be sure the sinew stays put.

BTY I'm not sure how much weight brought the tips to that possition. however, I got three bricks on the tillering string(21lbs) plus I'm pushing down fairly hard. If I had to guess I'd say around 40 lbs. I'm am planning to tighten that tillering string up some later tonight and might see if I can some how manage to get it on a scale. Might be hard to do without having her flip on me. Beleive me guys when I tell you I know what this might be like. The second time this had sinew on it had maybe 6 inches of reflex ans she wanted to flip worse than a fish out of water.

I'll post another pic later tonight with maybe a draw weight, if I'm lucky    

Cooter

[Madpigslayer]

Good Luck! I think you win a prize if you can stay on er for 8 seconds.  :D