Please Help Alignment

[hickry]

Please help!  I'm still relatively new to bow building.  I've built several shooters now, but am still on the steep part of the learning curve.  I finished a hickory selfbow a few months ago and have been having PROBLEMS shooting it.  I bare shaft tune my arrows, normally, and have had a REAL hard time doing that.  It seems to be VERY unforgiving.  I thought it was problems with my shooting, but I'm able to shoot my other bows OK.  So, I read an article this week which mentioned bracing the bow at a low brace height to check alignment.  I've never thought of this... and have always just eyeballed it. I tried it this morning and figured out that my string lies about 1/4-3/8" to the right of center on my handle (I'm a right handed shooter).  I don't know how big of a problem this is... but I can imagine that it makes it harder for the arrow to bend around the handle... and may explain all of the slapping with arrows throughout the spine ranges I've been trying.  So, now i have a finished bow (tru-oil) that I would like to try to re-align.  My limbs aren't the same length, and I would rather not flip the bow and chop off anything if I don't have to.  Does anyone have experience with re-aligning a finished bow?  I'm assuming that I would need to sand off finish, use a heat gun, and slowly bend the limb... is this right?  Thanks for reading.

[vanillabear?]

[Art B]

One of the great things I like about the Tru-oil finish is that it'll take some heat. I heat straighten finished bows all the time without problems. Usually not as severe as what you mentioned though.

First, you want to determine just where you need to make corrections. I would suggest you turn your bow around and look at it from the tip end and check for any limb twist. That's the first step and easiest to fix IMO.

With a wide limb hickory about the only choice you have for straightening is handle/fades or near tips.

But just take some time and study the bow good and first determine a coure of action. Heat your bow slow and make your corrections as needed. Good luck..........ART

[George Tsoukalas]

It's a matter of tuning. Info on my site. Jawge
 http://georgeandjoni.home.comcast.net/~georgeandjoni/selfbowcare.html

[hickry]

Thanks guys.  I ended up bending in the handle area and getting it back to very near the center of the handle.  I got started tuning a little this morning... and I really believe it's getting better... we'll see.  Thanks again!