R.W.: I'm glad your bow is shooting! Way to go
Sorry fot the long reply, but here goes:
Regarding the handshock:
1) With a non-centershot bow, you really need to shoot arrows that are lower in spine weight than your draw weight. I usually go around 5-10#, sometimes even 15# lower in spine weight. This could be the source of your handshock alone, as the arrow won't bend gracefully around the handle during release. Rather, it slams into the side of the handle. 160 grains is a healthy point, but I'm not sure it's enough to offset a 50# spined shaft. How's the arrow flight at say, 15-20 yards?
2) When you've got properly spined shafts, be critical of the total mass of the arrows. 10 grains per pound plus is where you'll be transferring nearly all the energy of the bow into the arrow (that is, and NOT into excess vibration that causes handshock). I would say that arrow tuning is the most important and most forgotten about aspect of tuning wooden bows.
3) At the same time you're checking your arrow set up, check the tiller. Make sure it's even at full drawn when DRAWN IN THE HAND. The tillering tree won't tell you much, as it can't mimic your hand placement, grip, draw, etc. Small adjusts here can take a bone-jarring bow down to a sweet shooter in a hurry...with proper arrows, that is.
4) If full-draw tiller and arrows both check out, try this step. If you've built the bow to exactly the dimensions I gave in the tutorial, it will be overbuilt by some degree. I would first gradually narrow the width SLIGHTLY in the outer 1/3 of each limb toward the tips. This will reduce outer limb mass and have little effect on tiller, as the bow doesn't do that much work in this region. A LITTLE here can go a long way. However, if you take off too much, you'll end up with a whip tillered bow, or worse yet one with a hinge or that will fail altogether. But don't be shy about it. Remember that wood is 8x stronger in thickness than in width.
5) Failing all of that you could consider trapping. There is enough wood in the bow to allow it, I believe. However, I rarely trap bows in this way, so I would not be the best resource for this. (I often use "heat trapping" [i.e. tempering the belly] which serves a similar purpose to back trapping, but is achieved through other means.)
I hope this helps you. You can get a sweet shooter out of this bow, no doubt. Take it slow and methodically. I like to keep notes as I go when tuning a bow. Also, do you have silencers on your bow? They dampen vibration, which is the culprit anyway. You could also be critical of your string (too thick or thin?), nock placement (too high or low?), release (are you plucking the string?), bow-hand grip (are you torquing the bow?), etc. Keep us posted! You'll get there.
Topic: The "So You Wanna Build a Bow?" Build-Along (Read 20006 times)
