A Dose of Humility

[Forwardhandle]

I noticed the ones that end up the best performing and the least amount of set  are the ones that require very little tiller after high brace in other words the ones that are 90 % tillered at brace the thing I do that not everybody agrees with is I never hold a bow drawing at any length for more then a few seconds, backed bows you can probably get away with it a little more but self bows  seems to induce set but each his own thats just how I do it  I try to minimise any stress on the wood tell it bends right .

[YosemiteSam]

Originally posted by BMorv:
I hear you Yosemite.  Just for clarification, all of the speeds that I mention are with at least 10 gpp arrows.  Anything less than that you aren't replicating a hunting situation, so it doesn't matter to me.  Who cares how fast you can shoot a toothpick.  
     
One thing I don't believe was talked about much on this thread is minimizing set.  The 1st 3 bows I made are all sluggish, and they have one thing in common: they all took 2+ inches of set.  They don't necessarily have bad tillers either (well not all of them).  Something that Mikkeekeswick said in one of his post was "keep thinking fresh belly wood".  That stuck in my mind for some reason.  I now make sure that I have a nice even bend with no weak spots before I stress the wood.  So on the long string or floor tiller stage you want to have a bend that is really close to what it's going to look like when it's done, before you bring it to brace.  If you bring it to brace too early you could have already induced irreversible set that won't go away even if you fix the tiller later in process.  I didn't pick up on those concepts on my 1st few.  I believe almost any design built with little set will perform to the expectations you mentioned.  Check out "no set tillering" by Badger on PA if you want to take it a step further.    

Sorry if you already know this information. I'm just trying to help as I've been there.

Love that toothpick line!

No apologies needed.  I'll check it out.  I know a fair amount about some things.  But building well-constructed bows ain't one of them.  I have a lot to learn so I appreciate the pointers & references.