Fast forward past all of that stuff: It is now a shooting bow that I feel is pretty well balanced in the hand and bending the way I want. I spent a great deal of time working on the balance of the limbs so that, to the feel of the hand while being drawn, one limb does not tip or tilt before the other. (This technique of feeling the balance of the limbs comes from Dean Torges's Hunting the Osage Bow. I didn't understand it before I tried it, but I do now. Well worth the time and effort, even if it means losing a pound or two in finessing the tiller.) In addition, I tried to bring the bending of the limbs about in the order suggested in Stim Wilcox's The Art of Making Selfbows. He refers to it as his 1-2-3 tillering technique. I've renamed it the MIO method for myself ("mio" conveniently means "my" in Italian and Spanish) so that I could remember what the 1-2-3 referred to: Middle, Inner, Outer. Get the midlimbs bending first, then the inner limb, and then the outer limb in the last few inches of draw.
The most important elements so far I feel is what I learned about the scallops and the cut-in decorations on the side -- elements that I would have thought could have caused the failure of the bow, but didn't. I'll save that for another post.
Meanwhile, here are some photos, and a video of the bow being drawn eventually back to the full 28 inches. The first shows the bow at brace (6" from belly). The second at full draw (28"). Don't be alarmed by how off-center it looks -- it's because it rocks in the handle cradle. Following both of those is a brief video showing it being drawn eventually to 28" (you'll see it rock at the start and end of the video).
More images show tips and the scallop where I managed to incorporate the knot that runs from the back through the side. Hickory is some tough stuff! Also a shot of the bow unbraced. Notice the string follow?
Lastly, the FD curve. Currently #52.5 @ 28". I only managed to get 138 fps with a 500 grain arrow using a 110 grain string; I'd like it to be about 15 fps higher, but I think the nature of the design (wide tips, shorter bow, flat untrapped back, and hickory in a damp environment) essentially limits what one can get. One can note on the chart the string stack happening toward the end of the draw, especially out past 24 inches. This is because the working part of the limb only amount to 46-47 inches or so. Frankly, I'm surprised I can get a 28" draw on this bow, given how little working limb there is! But the stacking at the end is not that bad at only around #3 per inch. It's also not a bad sort of stacking, per se -- it just reminds you you're getting to the end of the draw!
I still plan to do some more work on this one: heat treat the limbs to a) see if I can heat out some of the deflex and b) to try and make the limbs a little less prone to absorbing moisture from the air. (I've read that heat treating white woods can help in this regard, probably because it changes the physical structure of the wood. Maybe "cooking" the cells prevents them from reabsorbing moisture?) The bow may go up in weight a little bit, but we'll see. Once all of that is done, I plan to darken the limbs before I put the final seal coat on it.
