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I decided to crown the belly a little more after rounding the back to about a little less than the size of pea.

I read to do this somewhere on these boards and after having the back kind of bite into my grip while shooting it, this seemed to be a very good idea.

My other bows are rounded there, I have no idea why I did not do it to this bow when I first started tillering it a long time ago. I guess I forgot and had not really considered to be anything but an aesthetic feature, but now I know it is not only for that, but comfort in the draw and maybe a few more things I am not currently aware of.

After crowning the belly more, I noticed the same top end whip tiller it had in earlier stages of working on this bow, I had tillered it out until is was almost even, but after increasing the belly crown it came back as pronounced as it was before. I am in the process of tillering it out now and I almost have an even tiller.

I checked the weight once again, after this belly work and have lost almost 10# of draw weight at 27 inches. So as of the moment the bow currently draws about 65# at 27 inches. My drawlength is just under 26 inches and at that point I am getting about 55# from it, maybe a little more, so now I am not so sure I want to take anything off the upper limb sides.

If I get the tiller just a smidge more even, I think want finally want to stop and put a finish upon it and wrap a handle to it.

I am still looking in the TBB series where it explained the removal of wood from upper limb sides to increase the bow's speed without loosing too much draw weight. I think it was one of the chapters on either board bows, or English long bows, but I do not remember where.

rwelch wrote:

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A slightly under 26" draw on a 6' bow is rather short drawn . With normal tiller you are not stressing the wood much .Or said another way you have a lot of moving mass . In this case I have seen a bit of a whip ended tiller shoot pretty good . It is in effect a normal bow (for the draw length) on a long handle . This cuts way down on the moving mass ,and loads the wood closer to it's limit like it should be. Not hinged ,or with set in the outer limbs (as seen in lots of whip ended bows ) but tillered as if ,for the most part, the last 30" inches of each limb was the bow .

Ralph

Ralph, or anyone else that might know, is there any possible negative effect upon the returning limbs after being shot of a short drawn bow that was designed or tillered for a longer drawlength?

From what you have stated above, I would think this bow would have been more durable. It just suffered a failure that I am still trying to figure out.

The whip in the bow developed into a hinge, then it eventually cracked at that hinge. If you look at my video on the posting 'Sick Bow' below, you will notice, if you look very closely, between the first and second shots within that video the top whip end becomes a little more pronounced on the second shot. My form is little better on the second shot than the first, but the bow is in worse shape by this time. The crack now shows from the backing on the side going across 2 growth ring thicknesses towards the belly. As far as I know there is no ring violation at that point on this board.

This bow short drawn at 25 inches was showing about 55 to 57 pounds of draw weight, and this is where most of the shots were drawn to while shooting 33 inch arrows, which I now think were probably designed to be shot from an 80# compound bow. These arrows were given to me by someone that said they should shoot fine out of my 55 to 60 pound bows. I do not have any spining tools to check any of the wood shafts I have right now, and most of my wooden arrows are spined too light and will show squirrely flights if shot from my wooden bows. I currently do not have any wooden arrows spined for 55# to 60#.

So either, a mistake was made when re-tillering after crowning the belly (my ability for human error being the most likely culprit), or the arrow was too heavy for this bow, or maybe I should have tillered only to my draw length rather than beyond it, but I am highly doubtful on this being a factor. It could even be a combination of one or more of those problems described.

One thing I would like to say in my defence is that the red oak wood I obtain from hardware stores here gets extremely dry and most bow failures I have had using red oak show a great deal of brittlenss of the wood at the point they break or show any kind of splintering. Humidity in my area is almost non-existant except in June and July.

I have one red oak 55# ELB that I did not make; I bought it from another state in the Midwest and it has a waterproof sealing on it and it is performing fine. It does shoot a tiny bit slower than my other bows, but it sounds as though it is hitting harder, and penetration is often better than the other bows.

Although I getting a bit tired of many of red oak board bow projects failing, I will still continue trying to obtain bows from this wood, because it is the most available bow wood in my area. I have not had any real problems using hickory as of yet, only minor string follow that is solved by resting the bow on it's back, but this kind of wood is not as easily obtainable as the red oak.