Flipped tips and tillering question

[J. Holden]

So I'm in the process of building my 5th osage bow.  Hopefully my 2nd working one.  It's 60" tip to tip and over 1/2" thick still through out the limbs.  It's fairly wide, 1 1/2" by the handle, and 1/2" at the tips.

I wanted to flip the tips so I heated them up.  I did the one this afternoon and it worked good.  The other one, well, not so much.  It had a little deflex to begin with so I felt it needed more "flip"

The belly cracked and the tip is flipped past the other.  I scraped the cracks out as I have a lot of wood left in the limbs.  I got a nice taper going towards the tip and have plenty left to work with.

My question though is this, should I flip the good tip further, or un-flip the other tip to make it match?  The over-flipped tip also has some twist I'll need to undo so I was thinking it may undo some while heating for that.

What do the collective "you" think?

-Jeremy    

[Osagetree]

IMHO - Take it back out with the twist.

[psychmonky]

His humble opinions are usually right when it comes to the yellow stuff. Keep us posted so I know what to do if that ever happens to me.

[4est trekker]

I'd taper both tips and gently heat in the same general profile on both ends (preferably to match the end with less recurve).  Then I'd heat a couple two or three laminations to the same profile and apply them to the belly of each tip.  This will make your tips non-working and avoid the damage caused by the crack.  You should have enough length left at 60", particularly if you let it bend through the hand a touch.

Here's a picture of an unfinished limb to illustrate what I'm talking about:

 

[J. Holden]

Thanks for the input, I'll follow the advice.  4est, I was already thinking about a belly lamb at the tips similisr to your picture.  Not sure I have it in me to get that creative though.  Would one be sufficient?  Not thin the tip out so much and put a a strip of something boack there?

-Jeremy

[Black Mockingbird]

If you still had a lot of wood left to work with,you then tried to bend your tips with too much stock left on them and were too thick to be trying to heat bend them....its easier to do this when your staves is to floor tiller or near there thickness wise.

How do you know if you need to remove twist? This is wood bows,not glass,and a lil bit of twist don't hurt a thing...especially if your flipped tips are really mild and not at a steep static like recurve. If the twist is mild I then wouldn't mess with anything and risk the possibility of further inducing more damage on your stave until you get a string on it. You really won't know until you string it if that twist needs removed or not.

I would continue on not changing anything until its strung,unless you can see the string tracking will be off the handle then you'll have to correct that after you get it floor tillered.

Pictures will help tremendously here as ones opinion on twist and flipped tips can vary greatly from person to person.

[J. Holden]

Well, I'm not concerned about the twist or to much curve now.  I was working on floor tillering the bow today and lifted a pretty good sized splinter of the back.  It's almost funny because the back is concave.

While scraping today I was repeating to myself, go slow.  I planned on backing this bow with rawhide anyway.  So I figured I'd get it to floor tiller and then back it.

Well, it now has glue and clamps on it.  My thinking is when the glue dries, take that concave shape out of the back, round the edges slightly and then back it with rawhide.

Sound like a good fix?  The only reason I'm choosing rawhide is due to my limited (none) experience with sinew.  Rawhide seems a litlle easier to work with for a first time.

-Jeremy  

[J. Holden]

So I glued th splinter down with TBIII and let it dry for 36-48 hours.  I warmed up some rawhide and gat that ready.  After sizing the limbs I glued the rawhide on, wrapped it with ace bandages and it now sits in the den drying.  I think I'll give it to Friday until I unwrap it.  I'll keep you posted.  That rawhide is difficult to work with.  I think next time I'll give sinew a try.

-Jeremy  

[razorback]

How thin did you get the rawhide before applying. I have heard that it should only be about as thick as brown paper bag.

[J. Holden]

Um, if that's the case I've got some scraping/sanding/filing to do.  We'll see how it turns out.  Too late now...

-Jeremy  

[bowhntineverythingnh03743]

I used rawhide on a red oak bow which came out awesome and wasn't too hard to work with. I let it soak for an hour in warm water and then scraped off any slimmy stuff I could feel. Sized the bow with glue and then put it on the back of the bow. Wrapped it with bandages.

My only word of caution is if you wrapped it down over the sides. What a pain in the (#$* it was to sand and scrape that stuff off. Next time I will get it sized better so that it wasn't completely wrapping the sides of the bow.

Good luck!

Justin

[J. Holden]

Yeah, learned that one the hard way too!  Filed and scraped the excess today.  It is thicker in some spots than others.  I will try to get it close to the same thickness but I'm sure it wont be the same through out.  It looks good and I want to work it, must wait...  Ugh, why does it take so long to dry?!

-Jeremy  

[J. Holden]

If one tip isn't bending at the "flip" and looks kind of like a recurve limb, and the other tip is bending to look like a longbow limb, what am I supposed to do?  Scrape the one that isn't bending?  Is it too thick?  I'll try and get a pic up on Monday.

-Jeremy  

[J. Holden]

Having taken a picture now it doesn't seem as bad as my son said it looked.  I know I need to scrape from midlimb to tip and get that whole area working more.  It's not the short string, what do you think?
 
-Jeremy  

[Roy from Pa]

Top limb seems to need more work. Those long strings lie also, get that bow braced to a 6 inch brace height. A shorter string will put more stress on the outer limbs and could change the hole deal.

[k-hat]

and get it on a short string asap.

[J. Holden]

Got a short string on order, haven't taught myself that one yet.  Here's after some scraping:
Looks to me like the top limb is now needing the work.  I'll let it sit till the string shows up.  Come on OliverStacey...

-Jeremy  

[k-hat]

Yeah I wouldn't touch it until it's braced with the short string.  You can use nylon rope or similar for tillering.  Tie a loop in one end and a timber hitch on the other.  Or double loop it, but make sure it's short enough (unfortunately nylon likes to stretch.)  I've even used shoestrings hitched together.  Just make sure it's strong enough.

If you keep tillering with that long string, you're gonna end up with whippy tips.

[Roy from Pa]

That looks better, but like k-hat said, wait for the short string. I have lost bows because of those extra long tillering strings. The bow looked perfect on a long tillering string but when I braced it up to 6 inches, the outer limbs bent like wet noodles. When I first put a string on a new bow I am making and brace it up, the string lays real tight against the belly. I work the bow till the limb tips are bending to about 6 inches and then brace the bow to about 3 inches. In the early stages just look for any major flat spots or hinges, if the limbs are bending nicely then keep going. I then work the bow till the tips are bending to about 9 inches and at that point I brace the bow to a 6 inch brace height and finish the tillering.

[J. Holden]

I really value your opinions guys.  Thanks!

-Jeremy